The effect of odor exposure time on olfactory cognitive processing: An ERP study

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of stimulus time duration on central nervous odor processing. Twenty-one young healthy males participate in our study. There are three odor mixtures in this study and every odor mixture has two different duration time (300 ms; 500 ms). The odor was presented via a computer - controlled olfactometer and EEG was recorded from 64 scalp locations. At behavioral level, the longer the odor stimulus was presented, the greater the concentration was perceived by participants. Electrophysiological data showed that longer duration time lengthened the latency of Negative waves of about 200 ms appeared in stimulation (N2) and Positive waves of about 300 ms appeared in stimulation (P3) components, besides, have a larger N2 amplitude than the shorter duration time condition in the mid-frontal and left frontal-temporal areas. These results revealed that duration time of odor mixture do have an influence on the central nervous odor processing.