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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 12, 2025

Imaging Odor-Evoked Activities in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb using Optical Reflectance and Autofluorescence Signals
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Imaging Odor-Evoked Activities in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb using Optical Reflectance and Autofluorescence Signals

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Odors modulate color appearance.

Ryan J Ward1,2, Maliha Ashraf3, Sophie Wuerger4

  • 1Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom.

Frontiers in Psychology
|October 23, 2023
PubMed
Summary

Smell influences sight! This study shows that odors can alter human color perception, shifting the neutral gray point towards warmer hues. This demonstrates a crossmodal effect between olfaction and vision.

Keywords:
color perceptioncolorscrossmodal associationscrossmodal correspondencesneutral grayodorsolfactionolfactory perception

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Psychology
  • Sensory Perception

Background:

  • The brain integrates multisensory information, impacting subjective experiences.
  • Crossmodal correspondences link features across sensory modalities, influencing perception.
  • Vision often dominates, affecting other senses like olfaction.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how different odors affect human color perception.
  • To explore the influence of olfactory stimuli on visual achromatic judgments.

Main Methods:

  • Participants performed a neutral gray task, adjusting a color patch to be hue-less.
  • Olfactory stimuli (five different odors) were presented during the task.
  • The shift in the perceived neutral gray point was measured.

Main Results:

  • A small but systematic effect of odors on color perception was observed.
  • The perceived neutral gray point shifted towards warmer colors.
  • Four out of five odors showed trends aligning with expected crossmodal correspondences (e.g., cherry odor biasing towards red-brown).

Conclusions:

  • Olfactory stimuli can systematically alter human color perception.
  • This provides evidence for crossmodal interactions between smell and color vision.
  • Crossmodal correspondences play a role in integrating olfactory and visual information.