Murathan Kurfali has received 4.5 million sek, for the project ”Doftande AI? Integrering av lukt i stora språkmodeller” – Smelling AI? Integration of smell in Large Language Models!
Congratulations!
Murathan Kurfali
Department Days 2023, AI seminar
Another study from the lab is published in Food Quality & Preference! On the basis of natural language in product reviews, this study compares and maps the semantic spaces of the chemosensory vocabularies of the wine, perfume and food product domains.
Thomas Hörberg and Murathan Kurfali have spearheaded this study. Find it here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2024.105357
A new article from the Lab has been published in Cognitive Science! The article’s full title is ”A Rose by Another Name? Odor Misnaming is Associated with Linguistic Properties” and is about the work lead by Thomas Hörberg and Murathan Kurfali.
Abstract:
Naming common odors is a surprisingly difficult task: Odors are frequently misnamed. Little is known about the linguistic properties of odor misnamings. We test whether odor misnamings of old adults carry information about olfactory perception and its connection to lexical-semantic processing. We analyze the olfactory–semantic content of odor source naming failures in a large sample of older adults in Sweden (n = 2479; age 58–100 years). We investigate whether linguistic factors and semantic proximity to the target odor name predict how odors are misnamed, and how these factors relate to overall odor identification performance. We also explore the primary semantic dimensions along which misnamings are distributed. We find that odor misnamings consist of surprisingly many vague and unspecific terms, such as category names (e.g., fruit) or abstract or evaluative terms (e.g., sweet). Odor misnamings are often strongly associated with the correct name, capturing properties such as its category or other abstract features. People are also biased toward misnaming odors with high-frequency terms that are associated with olfaction or gustation. Linguistic properties of odor misnamings and their semantic proximity to the target odor name predict odor identification performance, suggesting that linguistic processing facilitates odor identification. Further, odor misnamings constitute an olfactory–semantic space that is similar to the olfactory vocabulary of English. This space is primarily differentiated along pleasantness, edibility, and concreteness dimensions. Odor naming failures thus contain plenty of information about semantic odor knowledge.
The article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70003.
Warm welcome to the new addition to our team – Marie Low!
She is our new Research Assistant to Malina Szychowska and her project on memory navigation: ”Navigating the Sensory Landscape: How Our Senses Shape Spatial Memories”
Marie just got her Masters degree in Psychology, at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, with the thesis titled: ”Emotion Recognition and Adult Aging: No Effect of Intranasal Oxytocin, but Sensory Modality Matters” (Supervisor: Håkan Fischer).
We’re happy to announce that our new research assistant, Frida Smids,
will join the lab. Frida will work with data collection in an ongoing study testing the effects of different sensory modalities in working memory training for older adults.
Frida has a Masters degree in Psychology from Lund’s University, titled Resting-state Functional Connectivity in Anhedonia: Exploring the Effects of Pramipexole (Supervisor Johannes Björkstrand. She is currently affiliated with Äldercentrum at the Karolinska Institute.
The SCI-Lab recently participated in the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (ISOT) in Reykjavik, June 22-26. Jonas Olofsson and William Fredborg delivered oral presentations in the symposium ”Working Memory in the Chemical Senses”. Meanwhile, Nira Cedres, Malina Szychowska, and Samet Albayrak presented their posters, receiving much positive feedback. We were proud to share our findings on human cognition and olfaction with so many wonderful colleagues, and are grateful for the opportunity to discuss both our research and theirs with so many brilliant minds. The lab members also enjoyed Iceland’s rugged beauty, hot springs and culinary offerings (but not the fermented shark).
During the spring, we have had two guest interns from Università ”Magna Græcia” di Catanzaro. Arianna Spatafora and Francesca Vozzo have been assisting us in our research projects and data collection – we wouldn´t have made it without them!
We wish them the best and great fortune in whatever they do next!
The SCI-Lab is attending the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (ISOT) in Reykavik, Iceland, on June 22-26. Five members are representing the lab. Jonas Olofsson and William Fredborg will have oral presentations in the “Working memory in the chemical senses” session, and Nira Cedres, Malina Szychowska and Samet Albayrak will have poster presentations. We are looking forward to see our colleagues in and share our latest research!
Sci-Lab is part of the Perception & Psykophysics division of Stockholm university’s Psychology Department.
As part of a visit to the University dignitaries from South African Universities visited our Division to see and try-out our lab resources.
We had a fun time demonstrating our ”toys” and we hope they had a fun time too!
Thank you for the visit!
Our article Olfactory categorization is shaped by a transmodal cortical network for evaluating perceptual predictions has been early released in JNeuroSci!
Abstract:
Creating and evaluating predictions are considered important features in sensory perception. Little is known about processing differences between the senses and their cortical substrates. Here, we tested the hypothesis that olfaction, the sense of smell, would be highly dependent on (non-olfactory) object-predictive cues and involve distinct cortical processing features. We developed a novel paradigm to compare prediction error processing across senses. Participants listened to spoken word cues (e.g. “lilac”) and determined whether target stimuli (odors or pictures) matched the word cue or not. In two behavioral experiments (total n = 113; 72 female), the disparity between congruent and incongruent response-times was exaggerated for olfactory relative to visual targets, indicating a greater dependency on predictive verbal cues to process olfactory targets. A pre-registered fMRI study (n = 30; 19 female) revealed the anterior cingulate cortex (a region central for error detection) being more activated by incongruent olfactory targets, indicating a role for olfactory predictive error processing. Additionally, both the primary olfactory and visual cortices were significantly activated for incongruent olfactory targets, suggesting olfactory prediction errors are dependent on cross-sensory processing resources, whereas visual prediction errors are not. We propose that olfaction is characterized by a strong dependency on predictive (non-olfactory) cues, and that odors are evaluated in the context of such predictions by a designated transmodal cortical network. Our results indicate differences in how predictive cues are used by different senses in rapid decision-making.
Stephen Pierzchajlo, PhD student, is the main author and with this release is the culmination of 4 years of work.
Fine the paper here: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2024/03/29/JNEUROSCI.1232-23.2024
Stephen Pierzchajlo
