Figures
An Electronic Nose Estimates Odor Pleasantness.
Electronic noses (eNoses) are typically tuned to identify particular odorants, ranging from "cocaine" to "spoiled milk". In contrast, here an eNose was tuned to the perceptual axis of odorant pleasantness, i.e., an axis ranging from very pleasant (e.g., rose) to very unpleasant (e.g., skunk). This allowed the eNose to then smell novel odorants it never encountered before, yet still generate odor pleasantness estimates in high agreement with human assessments regardless of the subject's cultural background. This suggests an innate component of odorant pleasantness that is tightly linked to molecular structure (see Haddad et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000740).
Image Credit: Genia Brodsky and Noam Sobel (The Weizmann Institute)
Citation: (2010) PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 6(4) April 2010. PLoS Comput Biol 6(4): ev06.i04. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pcbi.v06.i04
Published: April 29, 2010
Copyright: © 2010 Haddad et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Electronic noses (eNoses) are typically tuned to identify particular odorants, ranging from "cocaine" to "spoiled milk". In contrast, here an eNose was tuned to the perceptual axis of odorant pleasantness, i.e., an axis ranging from very pleasant (e.g., rose) to very unpleasant (e.g., skunk). This allowed the eNose to then smell novel odorants it never encountered before, yet still generate odor pleasantness estimates in high agreement with human assessments regardless of the subject's cultural background. This suggests an innate component of odorant pleasantness that is tightly linked to molecular structure (see Haddad et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000740).
Image Credit: Genia Brodsky and Noam Sobel (The Weizmann Institute)