ArticleNature human behaviour2024
Human olfactory perception embeds fine temporal resolution within a single sniff.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Theta oscillations are an organizational unit of odor processing in the olfactory bulb.Science advances · 2026Article
- Dexterous single sniffs for ethological active olfaction.Science advances · 2026Article
- Temporal sequence geometry enables odor recognition and generalization.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The Temporal Scaffolding of Sensory Organization.Annual review of psychology · 2026Review
- Global coordination of brain activity by the breathing cycle.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Manifold learning for olfactory habituation to strongly fluctuating backgrounds.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- How do mammals convert dynamic odor information into neural maps for landscape navigation?PLoS biology · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A sniff in humans typically lasts one to three seconds and is commonly considered to produce a long-exposure shot of the chemical environment that sets the temporal limit of olfactory perception. To break this limit, we devised a sniff-triggered apparatus that controls odorant deliveries within a sniff with a precision of 18 milliseconds. Using this apparatus, we show through rigorous psychophysical testing of 229 participants (649 sessions) that two odorants presented in one order and its reverse become perceptually discriminable when the stimulus onset asynchrony is merely 60 milliseconds (Cohen's d = 0.48; 95% confidence interval, (55, 59); 120-millisecond difference). Discrimination performance improves with the length of stimulus onset asynchrony and is independent of explicit knowledge of the temporal order of odorants or the relative amount of odorant molecules accumulated in a sniff. Our findings demonstrate that human olfactory perception is sensitive to chemical dynamics within a single sniff and provide behavioural evidence for a temporal code of odour identity.
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Registered trials
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