An olfactory demography of a diverse metropolitan population
(www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3493268/An olfactory demography of a diverse metropolitan population
Andreas Keller,1 Margaret Hempstead,1,2 Iran A Gomez,1,4 Avery N Gilbert,3 and Leslie B Vosshallcorresponding author1,2
This study proves the racial hierarchy of black-brown-white-asian also exists in olfactory senses.Consistent with earlier reports on differences in olfactory perception between racial groups [33], there were differences in our measure of olfactory acuity between races (median ranks: African-Americans 149; Asians 231; Caucasians 225) (Figure (Figure4d),4d), but not between Hispanics (median rank: 186) and Non-Hispanics (median rank: 201) (Figure (Figure4e).4e). Other demographic factors such as marital status or education did not correlate with olfactory acuity (data not shown; see the “demographics” tab of Additional file 1 for tabulation of these demographic data).
However, there were some dramatic differences between demographic groups. Statistically significant differences in pleasantness perception are shown in Figure Figure8.8. For 18 of the 134 stimuli the pleasantness rating differed significantly between African-American and Caucasian subjects (Figure (Figure8a).8a).
We showed that general olfactory acuity correlates with age, gender, smoking habits, body type, and race. In addition we have identified over 100 cases in which sensitivity to a specific odour, or the intensity or pleasantness perception of a specific odour, differed significantly between demographic groups. We also studied in detail how the perceived odour quality of three odours differs between demographic groups.
