Multivariate spectral analysis for identifying the brain activations during olfactory perception

Olfactory perception is a complex phenomenon associated with other processes such as cognition and emotion. Due to this complexity, there are still open issues and challenges regarding olfactory psychophysiology. One challenge concerns the investigation of the hedonic dimension of olfaction, and how it affects the power of the brain oscillations. Although there are some EEG studies exploring the changes in the power of the brain oscillations during olfactory perception, they use simple power spectral analysis techniques and vary much in terms of the reported findings. To reduce this variability, we propose the use of multivariate spectral analysis, to reveal only the frequency patterns of the EEG signals that contribute the most to olfactory perception. The goal is to investigate how these frequency patterns are affected by hedonically different odors throughout the cortex.