ArticleBrain and behavior2025
Semantical Visual Information Facilitates Odor Imagery: A Combined Neurophysiological and Psychometrical Approach.
Article in Brain and behavior, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05308433 (Cybersickness imAgiNg Olfactory Evocation), which is not on this map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Cybersickness imAgiNg Olfactory Evocation
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Semantical Visual Information Facilitates Odor Imagery: A Combined Neurophysiological and Psychometrical Approach.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Is it all in your head? Reducing virtual reality induced cybersickness by pleasant odor imagery.PloS one · 2025Article
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PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionOdor imagery (OI), or the ability to mentally simulate the presence of a smell, is a difficult cognitive function and is therefore misunderstood in terms of its neural underpinnings. In particular, the diverging results obtained in neuroimaging studies could be explained in part by the characteristics of the visual cues used to trigger this task. In this study, we investigated this question by comparing the effects of plain color patches, pictures, and words during OI using neurophysiological and psychometrical measurements.
methodsThirty healthy right-handed participants performed an OI task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging exam. They were instructed to focus on the odors evoked by different types of visual cues. Two 595s functional runs were performed using a block design in which seven individual plain colors, pictures, and odor labels were used as visual triggers for OI. After each functional run, behavioral ratings of success/failure of OI as well as subjective pleasantness and intensity of odor images were collected.
resultsThe OI task induced activity not only in regions of the olfactory network but also in non-olfactory brain regions. Across visual conditions, we observed activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, insula, supplementary motor area, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Strikingly, no significant activity was found in the piriform cortex despite overall success in the OI task according to behavioral ratings (83% to 93% depending on the condition).
conclusionsOur findings suggest that OI can occur without significant involvement of the primary olfactory regions, contradicting most of the literature on this topic. Only little behavioral and neurophysiological effects of visual conditions were revealed in our sample of good odor imagers, although semantical cues seem to require fewer cognitive resources to generate odor images. This assumption remains to be confirmed using specific tools for the measurement of cognitive load.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.