Chemosensory properties of human sweat
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Human sweat contains a mixture of odorants with trigeminal as well as olfactory properties. It has been shown that trigeminal perception is necessary to localize odors and that humans are not able to localize substances that only activate the olfactory system. To analyze the chemosensory properties of human sweat, we studied humans' ability to localize sweat stimuli to the different nostrils. Human sweat was collected during a bicycle workout (20 males) and was then applied to 34 different subjects (17 females) during odor detection and localization experiments by using an olfactometer. During the detection experiment, subjects were instructed to discriminate between sweat stimuli (20) and blanks (10). During the localization experiment, they were assigned to allocate the stimuli to either the right (15) or the left nostril (15). We found that subjects were able to detect the sweat stimuli with moderate to high sensitivity. However, they failed to localize the sweat stimuli to the accurate nostril above chance level. Due to this inability to localize the stimuli, we conclude that human sweat does not activate the intranasal trigeminal system but only the olfactory system.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 101-108 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Chemical senses |
Volume | 35 |
Issue number | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 30 Nov 2009 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Externally published | Yes |
External IDs
PubMed | 19948559 |
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Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- Body odors, Detection, Localization, Olfactory, Trigeminal