- Oral presentation
- Open Access
- Published:
Single scale for odor intensity in rodent olfaction
Flavour volume 3, Article number: O10 (2014)
Central to understanding the neural basis of perception is the relationship between stimulus identity and intensity. In olfaction, odor identity can signal a food source or a predator, while intensity can provide information about its proximity or quantity. The relative intensities of odors are therefore important in guiding behavioral decisions. It is however not known how animals compare quantities of different odors. Using a novel behavioral assay assessing perceived odor intensity in rats, we found that rats measure the intensity of different odors using a common perceptual scale. Position of an odor along this intensity scale was determined by three factors: concentration, molecular weight, and the adaptation state of the animal. Our results imply that the olfactory system separates intensity and identity, forming a common intensity scale for making quantitative comparisons between different odors.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
About this article
Cite this article
Sirotin, Y. Single scale for odor intensity in rodent olfaction. Flavour 3 (Suppl 1), O10 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/2044-7248-3-S1-O10
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/2044-7248-3-S1-O10
Keywords
- Public Health
- Molecular Weight
- Food Source
- Relative Intensity
- Adaptation State