In search of the structure of human olfactory space.
In search of the structure of human olfactory space.
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DOI：
10.3389/fnsys.2011.00065
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发表时间：
2011
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
Rinberg D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Koulakov AA;Kolterman BE;Enikolopov AG;Rinberg D
我们分析了人类观察员的反应，单分子气味的合奏。每种气味剂的特征在于从气味特征配置文件的数据库中获得的一组146个感知描述符。因此，每一种气味都由高度多维的感觉空间中的一个点来表示。在这项工作中，我们研究的安排气味在这个知觉空间。我们认为，气味密集采样二维曲面嵌入在多维的感觉空间。这个表面可以解释感知数据方差的一半以上。我们还表明，只有12%的实验方差不能解释的曲面基本上小的维度（<10）。我们认为，这些弯曲的流形代表了人类嗅觉系统采样的相关空间，从而为嗅觉感觉空间提供了替代品。对于二维近似的情况，我们将曲面上的两个参数与气味分子的物理化学参数联系起来。我们发现其中一个维度与分子连接性矩阵的特征值有关，而另一个维度则与分子极性的度量有关。我们讨论了这些发现的行为意义。
We analyze the responses of human observers to an ensemble of monomolecular odorants. Each odorant is characterized by a set of 146 perceptual descriptors obtained from a database of odor character profiles. Each odorant is therefore represented by a point in a highly multidimensional sensory space. In this work we study the arrangement of odorants in this perceptual space. We argue that odorants densely sample a two-dimensional curved surface embedded in the multidimensional sensory space. This surface can account for more than half of the variance of the perceptual data. We also show that only 12% of experimental variance cannot be explained by curved surfaces of substantially small dimensionality (<10). We suggest that these curved manifolds represent the relevant spaces sampled by the human olfactory system, thereby providing surrogates for olfactory sensory space. For the case of 2D approximation, we relate the two parameters on the curved surface to the physico-chemical parameters of odorant molecules. We show that one of the dimensions is related to eigenvalues of molecules’ connectivity matrix, while the other is correlated with measures of molecules’ polarity. We discuss the behavioral significance of these findings.