Predicting odor pleasantness from odorant structure: Pleasantness as a reflection of the physical world
Predicting odor pleasantness from odorant structure: Pleasantness as a reflection of the physical world
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DOI：
10.1523/jneurosci.1158-07.2007
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发表时间：
2007-09-12
影响因子：
5.3
通讯作者：
Sobel, Noam
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Khan, Rehan M.;Luk, Chung-Hay;Sobel, Noam
尽管人们一致认为，分子的物理化学特征决定了它们感知到的气味，但管理这种关系的规则仍然未知。这种理解的一个重要障碍是描述感知和分子的特征的高维度。我们应用了一种统计方法来降低大量分子的气味感知和物理化学描述符中的维度。我们发现知觉的主轴是气味愉悦感，关键的是，物理化学性质的主轴反映了嗅觉的主轴。这使得我们能够仅通过它们的物理化学性质来预测新分子的快感。嗅觉在很大程度上取决于经验和学习。然而，我们的发现表明，嗅觉愉悦在一定程度上也是与生俱来的，对应于生物相关分子之间具有最大区分性的自然轴。
Although it is agreed that physicochemical features of molecules determine their perceived odor, the rules governing this relationship remain unknown. A significant obstacle to such understanding is the high dimensionality of features describing both percepts and molecules. We applied a statistical method to reduce dimensionality in both odor percepts and physicochemical descriptors for a large set of molecules. We found that the primary axis of perception was odor pleasantness, and critically, that the primary axis of physicochemical properties reflected the primary axis of olfactory perception. This allowed us to predict the pleasantness of novel molecules by their physicochemical properties alone. Olfactory perception is strongly shaped by experience and learning. However, our findings suggest that olfactory pleasantness is also partially innate, corresponding to a natural axis of maximal discriminability among biologically relevant molecules.