Sensory

Nature and human well-being: The olfactory pathway

The world is undergoing massive atmospheric and ecological change, driving unprecedented challenges to human well-being. Olfaction is a key sensory system through which these impacts occur. The sense of smell influences quality of and satisfaction …

Using SCENTinel® to predict SARS-CoV-2 infection: insights from a community sample during dominance of Delta and Omicron variants

Based on a large body of previous research suggesting that smell loss was a predictor of COVID-19, we investigated the ability of SCENTinel, a newly validated rapid olfactory test that assesses odor detection, intensity, and identification, to …

Emotional self-body odors do not influence the access to visual awareness by emotional faces

A growing body of research suggests that emotional chemosignals in others’ body odor (BO), particularly those sampled during fearful states, enhance emotional face perception in conscious and preconscious stages. For instance, emotional faces access …

Text-based predictions of COVID-19 diagnosis from self-reported chemosensory descriptions

There is a prevailing view that humans’ capacity to use language to characterize sensations like odors or tastes is poor, providing an unreliable source of information. Here, we developed a machine learning method based on Natural Language Processing …

Covid-19 affects taste independent of taste-smell confusions: results from a combined chemosensory home test and online survey from a large global cohort

People often confuse smell loss with taste loss, so it is unclear how much gustatory function is reduced in patients self-reporting taste loss. Our pre-registered cross-sectional study design included an online survey in 12 languages with …

Chemosensory Dysfunction in Long-Term COVID-19 Assessed by Self-Reported and Direct Psychophysical Methods

Chemosensory dysfunction is a frequent postacute sequela of COVID-19. Depending on the type of test used to measure it (self-report vs. direct test), the degree of chemosensory dysfunction in long-term COVID-19 has been found to be highly variable. …

A follow-up on quantitative and qualitative olfactory dysfunction and other symptoms in patients recovering from COVID-19 smell loss

Sudden smell loss is a specific early symptom of COVID-19, which, prior to the emergence of Omicron, had estimated prevalence of ~40% to 75%. Chemosensory impairments affect physical and mental health, and dietary behavior. Thus, it is critical to …