INFORMATION-PROCESSING IN CHEMOSENSORY EXPERIENCE

描述(由申请人提供)：对空气中化学品暴露的环境健康风险和不良反应的认知存在差异，这对政策制定者、医疗专业人员和公众构成了复杂的公共卫生挑战。该项目的目标是绘制一张综合因素图，以确定空气中化学品暴露的主观体验与(1)化学品直接引起的感觉和生理影响，以及(2)可间接调节化学品暴露对健康影响的感知、记忆和判断所涉及的心理过程之间的关系。到目前为止，我们的发现继续支持这样的观点，即在健康的个人中，与化学物质或暴露情况有关的预期受到暴露历史或人格类型等因素的调节，导致个人对化学暴露的反应有很大差异。这些因素可能会得到加强，从而对患有哮喘等先前存在的呼吸道疾病的个人产生更大的公共健康影响。目前的建议将通过研究哮喘患者的认知信念、预期和对气味和刺激物的生理反应之间的相互作用，扩展我们对认知信念、预期和生理反应之间的相互作用的理解，对哮喘患者来说，化学暴露对他们来说既有更大的感知健康风险，也有更大的实际健康风险。这一努力将使近1700万美国人更好地确定暴露在一系列气味化学品中对呼吸健康的影响，并可能通过自主调节和反馈来确定治疗方法，这些疗法可能对改善这些人对一系列空气中化学物质暴露的不良反应特别有用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Variation in the perception of environmental health risks and adverse response to airborne chemical exposures constitutes a complex public health challenge for policy makers, the medical profession and the public. The goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive map of factors that determine how the subjective experience from an airborne chemical exposure is related to (1) the sensory and physiological effects that are directly elicited by the chemical and (2) the psychological processes involved in perception, memory and judgment that can indirectly mediate health effects from chemical exposures. Our findings to date continue to support the perspective that among healthy individuals, expectancies related to the chemical or the exposure situation, modulated by factors such as exposure history or personality type, lead to significant variation in an individual's response to a chemical exposure. These factors are likely to be enhanced and consequently have a greater public health impact for individuals with pre-existing respiratory disease, such as asthma. The current proposal will extend our understanding of the interaction between cognitive beliefs, expectancies and physiological responses to odors and irritants by studying those of asthmatics, for whom there is both greater perceived and actual health risk from chemical exposures. This effort will lead to better identification of the respiratory health impact of exposure to a range of odorous chemicals for nearly 17 million Americans, and may possibly identify therapies via autonomic regulation and feedback that may be particularly useful for ameliorating the adverse response of these individuals to a range of airborne chemical exposures.