About This Project

Our sense of smell is tightly connected with our memory: everyone has experienced how odors can evoke the recall of strong emotions. As humans, we live in a world packed with social inputs, among which human body odors are one powerful social communication tool that is often masked by fragranced hygiene products. This study aims to investigate to what extent human body odors can affect human brain and memory.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Human body odors are a particular types of odor that can provide communication among conspecifics and are able to carry different types of social information regarding individuals’ identities (e.g., age, health status) and personal predisposition (Parma et al., 2017). However, previous studies have investigated only the effects of common odors on working memory: odors have been shown to be able to increase memory performance when the same odor is presented during both encoding and recognition of stimuli (Wiemers et al., 2014). Moreover, a recent study has revealed an increased activation in the piriform cortex for successful encoding of stimuli when a congruent odor was presented during both encoding and recognition compared to incongruent presentation of odors (Reichert et al., 2017).

What is the significance of this project?

So far, human body odors have been examined only in relation of the neural mechanism involved in their perceiving (Lundström et al., 2009) or in relation of the emotions that they can evoke (Mutic et al., 2016) but we still do not know their effects on cognitive tasks, such as working memory task. In this perspective, we have designed a project to investigate whether human body odors perceived as context could enhance the recognition of faces. In the planned project, the encoding and recognition of faces will be conducted during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to explore the neuronal mechanism of human body odor-related effects on cognitive processing. Results of the planned study will elucidate the behavioral and neuronal effects of human body odors on working memory.

What are the goals of the project?

In a first step, 10 odors have been pre-evaluated by 20 participants regarding their intensity, pleasantness and familiarity quality in order to select one neutral odor. For the preparation of the human body odors, we will recruit 30 participants as body odor donors. These donors will be asked to follow behavioral, nutritional (i.e., no alcohol, smoking, spicy food) and hygiene instructions and to wear a t-shirts for 12 consecutive hours during the day. Moreover, 80 healthy young participants will take part in the experimental study. This study will consist of an encoding task of faces during the presentation of neutral odor or body odor and, after 40 minutes, a recognition task during the presentation of neutral odor or body odor. Both task will be performed inside the MRI scanner.