Psychologists on the College of Jena have revealed a dictionary of fragrances that lists how hundreds of take a look at individuals understand, describe and classify odours. Credit score: Jens Meyer
Individuals all around the world largely agree on what the colour blue seems to be like or what the form of a ball seems like. However in the case of describing odors, opinions usually differ. It is because, not like the processing of wavelengths of sunshine within the mind, which makes it potential to find out colours comparatively clearly, it’s nonetheless not simple to infer the odor of gear in the environment from their chemical composition.
To assist clear up this so-called stimulus-percept downside, scientists at Friedrich Schiller College Jena have now offered knowledge units wherein they compile how hundreds of take a look at topics understand, describe, and classify odors.
“The chemical structure of everything in our environment that we can smell is generally very complex. We are usually unable to say exactly what odor the individual chemical components emit, as the individual substances dock onto different receptors in the nose depending on their composition. For example, we don’t know how a certain amount of carbon atoms smells,” says Antonie Bierling from the Institute of Psychology on the College of Jena.
So as to have the ability to make normal predictions about how an odor impacts folks primarily based on molecular properties, an excessive amount of info is required about how folks understand fundamental chemical constructing blocks.
On the way in which to an digital nostril
This is the reason scientists on the College of Jena have joined forces with colleagues at TU Dresden to create a elementary odor database as a part of the Olfactorial Perceptronics undertaking. The undertaking brings collectively varied analysis disciplines: psychology, physics, chemistry, supplies science, and drugs. For the database, they’d greater than 1,200 take a look at topics odor 74 monomolecular—i.e., chemically very merely structured—odor samples.
The take a look at topics then described what they perceived with their nostril in their very own phrases and likewise used a score scale to evaluate, amongst different issues, how nice or intense they discovered the respective odor. Normal statements concerning the odor of sure substances might be distilled from this info on notion.
The outcomes are revealed in Scientific Knowledge. The researchers are additionally making their outcomes accessible to most of the people by way of an app (in German).
Along with the essential findings on odor notion, such databases pave the way in which for potential purposes. “Our smartphone, for example, can recognize our face or our voice—but when it comes to digital smelling, developers are still coming up against fundamental limits,” explains Alexander Croy, a physicist from the Institute of Bodily Chemistry on the College of Jena.
“With the help of such research results, however, we are already getting closer to the electronic nose and may even be able to identify our own body odor at some point.”
Smelly ft in 13 languages
Such features might have monumental significance for drugs, for instance. The researchers in Jena have due to this fact joined forces with colleagues from Finland, Israel and the Czech Republic to develop one other knowledge set that information physique odors. The joint undertaking is known as “Smart Electronic Olfaction for Body Odor Diagnostics”—SMELLODI for brief.
“We know that certain diseases have an impact on body odor. It can therefore be very helpful in recognizing and diagnosing illnesses to record it in detail,” says Antonie Bierling. “However, this cannot be articulated well, as the vocabulary for describing body odor is still very limited.”
The researchers due to this fact requested greater than 2,600 take a look at topics in 17 international locations on-line how they’d describe the odor of particular person elements of the physique and the way it differs when an individual is in poor health or has been exercising. The research can also be revealed within the journal Scientific Knowledge.
This resulted in a list of descriptions for varied odors in 13 languages, which produces clear overlaps and thus permits normal statements to be made about how sure areas of the physique odor. The take a look at topics perceived armpit odor as sweaty, bitter and pungent, they described unhealthy breath as both recent or pungent and foot odor as tacky.
Due to this broad database, scientists conducting analysis on this discipline now have entry to a extra standardized language system for describing odor perceptions.
Extra info:
Antonie Louise Bierling et al, A dataset of laymen olfactory notion for 74 mono-molecular odors, Scientific Knowledge (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41597-025-04644-2
Antonie L. Bierling et al, A standardized lexicon of physique odor phrases crafted from 17 international locations, Scientific Knowledge (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41597-025-04630-8
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An fragrant lexicon: Complete perfume database gives insights into human notion of odors (2025, February 28)
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