Assessing olfactory perception in young persons. A neuroscience perspective

This paper is aimed at demonstrating the correlation between a neuroscientific index - the Approach/Withdrawal one (A/W), which is related to the brain performance - and the level of perceived pleasantness in young subjects undergoing diverse olfactory stimuli. The above mentioned index is employed in the assessment of audio-visual stimuli, and has been hereby estimated by using the elettroencephalogram (EEG), thanks to which it has been possible to study the activity of the Pre- Frontal Cortex (brain region connected with the pleasantness emotion experienced during a sensorial stimulation). In order to do so, this study recorded the EEG signals from several healthy no-smokers subjects (12 males and 12 females, 25 ± 2,6 years) during the perception of 10 diverse odors. Each olfactory stimulus has returned a cerebral A/W index for every subject: the related values have been statistically compared with the appreciation numeric scores assessed by the subjects in a questionnaire. Originality and value of this research lie in the following finding: the level of pleasantness towards odorous substances is measurable by analysing the EEG signals returned when presenting such substances to a pre-determined sample. From a managerial perspective, this method represents a biasfree technique for the assessment of a perfume performance.