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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 11, 2026

Constructing an Olfactometer for Rodent Olfactory Behavior Studies

Constructing an Olfactometer for Rodent Olfactory Behavior Studies

Published on: April 11, 2025

What can an orbitofrontal cortex-endowed animal do with smells?

Jay A Gottfried¹

¹Cognitive Neurology & Alzheimer's Disease Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL 60611, USA. j-gottfried@northwestern.edu

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

|September 12, 2007

Summary

Human olfactory perception is not solely based on odorant structure. Experience and brain regions like the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) dynamically shape odor quality coding, improving olfactory perception.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Olfactory Perception
Sensory Processing

Background:

Odor quality is traditionally linked to molecular structure.
Emerging evidence highlights the influence of learning, experience, and context on human olfactory perception.
Olfactory perception may involve integrative mechanisms in higher-order brain regions, not just direct receptor mapping.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of the human orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in forming and modulating odor quality coding.
To determine if olfactory information within the OFC is static or dynamic.
To assess the relationship between OFC activation and olfactory perception improvement.

Main Methods:

Utilized olfactory psychophysical techniques.
Employed functional imaging approaches.
Combined behavioral and neuroimaging data to analyze OFC activity during olfactory tasks.

Main Results:

Sensory-specific odorant information in the human OFC is not fixed but is highly malleable.
Perceptual experience can rapidly update odor quality coding within the OFC.
The degree of OFC activation correlated with subsequent improvements in olfactory perception behaviorally.

Conclusions:

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) plays a crucial role in integrating olfactory sensation, perception, and experience.
Odor quality coding within the OFC is dynamically modulated by experience.
Findings suggest OFC functions extend mechanisms for behavioral flexibility in response to chemosensory signals.