The plasticity of olfactory learning in culinary students and matched controls

Brain plasticity is essential for experts to develop and maintain a high skill level. The aim was to investigate chemosensory sensitivity and central structural connectivity in culinary students naturally training olfactory abilities throughout the first year of education and compare the findings to matched controls.

The population included 24 culinary students and 28 controls at the start of their education and 12 months later. The Sniffin' Sticks olfactory test of olfactory capabilities for threshold, discrimination, and identification were used. Central olfactory plasticity was investigated with magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging to create a structural connectivity matrix of primary and secondary olfactory processing areas for each participant with the seed at the primary olfactory cortex.

For olfactory function, the threshold worsened from 7.23 to 5.42 for controls (P = 0.01); however, Discrimination increased for culinary students from 12.16 to 13.61 (P = 0.03).Compared to controls,culinary students demonstrated stronger connectivity to the gyrus rectus (t = 2.49 p = 0.02) and had a priori stronger connectivity to the caudate nucleus at baseline (t = 2.7147, p = 0.0091), and at follow-up (t = 2.18, P = 0.03).

Culinary students improved their discriminative olfactory abilities during the first year of their education compared to non-culinary students. The culinary students had apriori stronger connectivity to the caudate nucleus than the controls, which remained present at follow-up. Additionally, the culinary students demonstrated stronger connectivity to the gyrus rectus after the first year of their education compared to controls.