Chem. Senses 24: 161-170,
1999
© Oxford University Press
Olfactory Discrimination Ability of Human Subjects for Ten Pairs of Enantiomers
Institut für Medizinische Psychologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Goethestraße 31, D-80336 München, Germany
Correspondence to be sent to: Matthias Laska, Institut für Medizinische Psychologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Goethestraße 31, D-80336 München, Germany. e-mail: Laska{at}imp.med.uni-muenchen.de
We tested the ability of human subjects to distinguish between enantiomers, i.e.
odorants which are identical except for chirality. In a forced-choice triangular test procedure 20
subjects were repeatedly presented with 10 enantiomeric odor pairs and asked to identify the
bottle containing the odd stimulus. We found (i) that as a group, the subjects were only able to
significantly discriminate the optical isomers of 
-pinene, carvone and limonene, whereas
they failed to distinguish between the (+) and (-)-forms of menthol, fenchone, rose
oxide, camphor, -terpineol, ß-citronellol and 2-butanol; (ii) marked individual
differences in
discrimination performance, ranging from subjects who were able to significantly discriminate
between 6 of the 10 odor pairs to subjects who failed to do so with 9 of the 10 tasks; (iii) that
with none of the 10 odor pairs were the antipodes reported to differ significantly in subjective
intensity when presented at equal concentrations; and (iv) that error rates were quite stable and
did not differ significantly between sessions, and thus, we observed a lack of learning or training
effects. Additional tests of the degree of trigeminality and threshold measurements of the optical
isomers of -pinene, carvone and limonene suggest that the discriminability of these three
enantiomeric odor pairs is indeed due to differences in odor quality. These findings support the
assumption that enantioselective molecular odor receptors may only exist for some but not all
volatile enantiomers and thus that chiral recognition of odorants may not be a general
phenomenon but is restricted to some substances.
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