Accounting for Subjectivity in Experimental Research on Human Olfaction.
Marylou Mantel, Jean-michel Roy, Moustafa Bensafi
Chemical senses January 1, 2021 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1093/chemse/bjaa082 via PubMed
Summary
People vary greatly in how they perceive smells, yet subjective experience has been neglected in olfaction research. Drawing on methods from consciousness science, this article argues that rigorously collecting subjective reports can improve understanding of odor perception diversity and its neural basis. Several approaches for doing so are presented.
Study at a glance
| Design | review |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Adapting methods from consciousness science to olfaction can enable rigorous subjective reports, improving understanding of perceptual variability and its neural mechanisms. |
Abstract
Although olfaction is a modality with great interindividual perceptual disparities, its subjective dimension has been let aside in modern research, in line with the overall neglect of consciousness in experimental psychology. However, following the renewed interest for the neural bases of consciousness, some methodological leads have been proposed to include subjectivity in experimental protocols. Here, we argue that adapting such methods to the field of olfaction will allow to rigorously acquire subjective reports, and we present several ways to do so. This will improve the understanding of diversity in odor perception and its underlying neural mechanisms.