Science· 2014Q1
Humans Can Discriminate More than 1 Trillion Olfactory Stimuli
- 924citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2014year
Short summary
Humans can discriminate at least 1 trillion different olfactory stimuli, vastly exceeding previous estimates and surpassing the discriminatory capacity of human vision and hearing.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Humans can discriminate at least 1 trillion olfactory stimuli.
- This capacity is orders of magnitude greater than previous estimates (e.g., 10,000).
- The olfactory system's discriminatory power exceeds that of vision and hearing.
- The findings are based on psychophysical testing of odor mixture discrimination.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Humans can discriminate several million different colors and almost half a million different tones, but the number of discriminable olfactory stimuli remains unknown. The lay and scientific literature typically claims that humans can discriminate 10,000 odors, but this number has never been empirically validated. We determined the resolution of the human sense of smell by testing the capacity of humans to discriminate odor mixtures with varying numbers of shared components. On the basis of the results of psychophysical testing, we calculated that humans can discriminate at least 1 trillion olfactory stimuli. This is far more than previous estimates of distinguishable olfactory stimuli. It demonstrates that the human olfactory system, with its hundreds of different olfactory receptors, far outperforms the other senses in the number of physically different stimuli it can discriminate.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Science, 2014 · DOI ↗
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Field: Sensory Systems
Sensory SystemsNeuroscience