Thomas Hörberg taught PhD students and postdocs during the FLAVOURsome Advanced Training School in Dresden on the topic of ”Linguistic analyses of flavor”. At the end of the lecture, the students got to describe the flavors of ten different food items. A flavor space, a similarity matrix of the flavors, wasthen derived from their descriptions. A truly hands on experience of how language can be used to analyse and map flavors.
What is it like being a research assistant in cognitive neuroscience? How does your brain remember the locations of smells and sounds? How does your brain help you recognize emotions expressed by other people? Marie Low will be visiting schools on April 8 to tell students about psychology research, as part of the “Borrow a Researcher” event held by ForskarFredag (“Låna en forskare”).
If you want to borrow her – or another researcher – find them here: https://forskarfredag.se/
A collaboration with Theresa White of Le Moyne College has been published in Chemical Senses. The systematic review A Cognitive Nose? Evaluating Working Memory Benchmarks in the Olfactory Domain sheds light on the operation of Working memory in olfaction and review research spanning the last 50 years.
Highlights:
According to ChatGPT: ”The study suggests that olfactory memory shares many similarities with working memory in other senses, though there are distinct differences. It emphasizes the need for future research to expand WM theories beyond visual and auditory senses to better understand how our memory interacts with smells.”
Find it here: https://academic.oup.com/chemse/
A new article from the Lab – Evidence from odor similarity judgments suggests a widespread ability to imagine odors – was just published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
In this study, comparisons of similarity judgments between smelled and imagined odors revealed a strong correlation, suggesting that perceptual imagery of odors is possible, with pleasantness serving as a key determinant.
Authors: Stephen Pierzchajlo, Thomas Hörberg, Sandra Challma and Jonas K. Olofsson.
The article can be found here: https://psycnet.apa.org/
Today is Frida’s last day at the SCI-lab! Frida is starting a PhD position at the Karolinska Institute as part of the the Aging Research Center (ARC), with Erika Jonsson Laukka and her research team. Thank you Frida for your great contributions to our work, and good luck in the future!
A while ago the Swedish Research Council granted Murathan Kurfali 4.5 million for the project ”Doftande AI? Integrering av lukt i stora språkmodeller” – Smelling AI? Integration of smell in Large Language Models!
Dagens industri picked this up and has published an interview with Murathan and Jonas. Read it here: https://www.di.se/nyheter/ (in Swedish).
Jonas wrote a piece for The Guardian’s ”The Big Idea” section about the importance of smell.
From the article:
Smell has an outsize effect on our thoughts and moods, so it’s worth paying more attention to it
Find it at the Guardian here: Looking for a better life? Follow you nose
The Forgotten Sense is a research journey through the uncharted territory of human olfaction – smell. After having been dismissed by scientists and philosophers for centuries, the human sense of smell was rarely fully recognized for its sensitivity or importance for human well-being and psychology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of us lost the smell ability we had taken for granted. The experience, which was transient for the fortunate majority, made our sense of smell more appreciated. Few know how remarkably sensitive their noses are, and just how important the sense of smell is for our brain health, our sexuality, and our political views. In The Forgotten Sense, Jonas Olofsson, Professor of Psychology at Stockholm University and Principal Investigator of the SCI-LAB, takes the reader on a tour of our most essential sense, sharing insights gained through being immersed in the research on human sense of smell for over two decades. The book can be ordered via the Mariner/HarperCollins website.
In a new study, published in Human Brain Mapping, SCI-lab members Georgios Menelaou and Jonas Olofsson teamed up with researchers from Harvard University, Northwestern University and Karolinska Institute to understand how the smell brain regions are connected to deeper brain networks – the so-called Default-Mode Network (DMN) – which is thought to be responsible for concepts and meaning. The connections were measured with resting-state fMRI using a stepwise connectivity method. They found that the sense of smell was different from other senses by having a closer connective pathway to the DMN. They also found that the olfactory regions reached the DMN via two distinct pathways in the brain. The research gives insights into how the sense of smell connects to other parts of the brain in unique ways. The work was sponsored by the Swedish Research Council and the Wallenberg Foundations.
The National committee for Psychology awards the best dissertation from all newly defended psychology dissertations in Sweden. This year, Marta Zakrzewska won with the dissertation ”Olfaction and prejudice: The role of body odor disgust sensitivity and disease avoidance in understanding social attitudes”. She did her PhD at the SCI-Lab with Jonas Olofsson as her main supervisor.
Her dissertation previously won the Department of Psychology’s (Stockholm university) best dissertation award. Today she works at RISE, after finishing a post doc at the Karolinska Institute.
The Committee motivation:
”Dr. Marta Zakrzewska tilldelas Nationalkommitténs pris till yngre forskare 2024 för sin imponerande och nyskapande forskning kring lukt och sociala fördomar. Med stor vetenskaplig noggrannhet och kreativ metodologisk bredd har Dr. Zakrzewska undersökt hur kroppsluktsaversion och sociala attityder samspelar inom ramen för det beteendemässiga immunsystemet. Genom att kombinera socialpsykologiska perspektiv med olfaktorisk forskning på ett unikt sätt har Dr. Zakrzewska belyst ett högaktuellt och originellt ämnesområde som både väcker nyfikenhet och har potential att intressera en bred publik.”
Marta Zakrzewska nails it! (her winning dissertation)