The effect of experience and learning on olfactory perception.

Abstract

In this article, many psychological researches on olfaction, which published after a memorial paper by Buck and Axel (1991), were introduced. These “new” researches revealed that the human olfactory perception is different from the combination of information from olfactory receptors, and that the human olfactory perception is affected by top-down processing from cognitive processes, such as memory, expectation, language and attention. This article aims to introduce these psychological researches on olfaction, and also to understand human olfactory perception from a point of studying odor environments.