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The perception of odor pleasantness is shared across cultures

2022; Elsevier BV; Volume: 32; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.cub.2022.02.062

1879-0445

Artin Arshamian, Richard C. Gerkin, Nicole Kruspe, Ewelina Wnuk, Simeon Floyd, Carolyn O’Meara, Gabriela Garrido Rodriguez, Johan N. Lundström, Joel D. Mainland, Asifa Majid,

Biochemical Analysis and Sensing Techniques

Humans share sensory systems with a common anatomical blueprint, but individual sensory experience nevertheless varies. In olfaction, it is not known to what degree sensory perception, particularly the perception of odor pleasantness, is founded on universal principles,1Khan R.M. Luk C.-H. Flinker A. Aggarwal A. Lapid H. Haddad R. Sobel N. Predicting odor pleasantness from odorant structure: pleasantness as a reflection of the physical world.J. Neurosci. 2007; 27: 10015-10023Crossref PubMed Scopus (253) Google Scholar, 2Haddad R. Medhanie A. Roth Y. Harel D. Sobel N. Predicting odor pleasantness with an electronic nose.PLoS Comp. Biol. 2010; 6: e1000740Crossref PubMed Scopus (49) Google Scholar, 3Keller A. Gerkin R.C. Guan Y. Dhurandhar A. Turu G. Szalai B. Mainland J.D. Ihara Y. Yu C.W. Wolfinger R. et al.Predicting human olfactory perception from chemical features of odor molecules.Science. 2017; 355: 820-826Crossref PubMed Scopus (115) Google Scholar, 4Joussain P. Chakirian A. 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Contrary to expectations, culture explained only 6% of the variance in pleasantness rankings, whereas individual variability or personal taste explained 54%. Importantly, there was substantial global consistency, with molecular identity explaining 41% of the variance in odor pleasantness rankings. Critically, these universal rankings were predicted by the physicochemical properties of out-of-sample molecules and out-of-sample pleasantness ratings given by a tenth group of western urban participants. Taken together, this shows human olfactory perception is strongly constrained by universal principles.