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Chemical Senses Advance Access originally published online on September 22, 2009
Chemical Senses 2009 34(9):753-761; doi:10.1093/chemse/bjp062
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Psychometric Functions for Ternary Odor Mixtures and Their Unmixed Components

Toshio Miyazawa1, Michelle Gallagher2, George Preti2,3 and Paul M. Wise2

1 Flavor System & Technology Laboratory, R&D Control Division, Ogawa & Co., Ltd, 15-7 Chidori Urayashu-shi, Chiba 279-0032, Japan 2 Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3308, USA 3 Department of Dermatology, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

Correspondence to be sent to: Paul M. Wise, Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3308, USA. e-mail: pwise{at}monell.org


  Abstract

People are often able to reliably detect a mixture of 2 or more odorants, even if they cannot reliably detect the individual mixture components when presented individually. This phenomenon has been called mixture agonism. However, for some mixtures, agonism among mixture components is greater in barely detectable mixtures than in more easily detectable mixtures (level dependence). Most studies that have used rigorous methods have focused on simple, 2-component (binary) mixtures. The current work takes the next logical step to study detection of 3-component (ternary) mixtures. Psychometric functions were measured for 5 unmixed compounds and for 3 ternary mixtures of these compounds (2 of 5, forced-choice method). Experimenters used air dilution olfactometry to precisely control the duration and concentration of stimuli and used gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to verify vapor-phase concentrations. For 2 of the 3 mixtures, agonism was approximately additive in general agreement with similar work on binary mixtures. A third mixture was no more detectable than the most detectable component, demonstrating a lack of agonism. None of the 3 mixtures showed evidence of level dependence. Agonism may be common in ternary mixtures, but general rules of mixture interaction have yet to emerge. For now, detection of any mixture must be measured empirically.

Key words: mixture interaction, psychophysics, threshold

Accepted 24 August 2009


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