Marta Zakrzewska, who defended her PhD thesis last year, was selected for the best PhD thesis award at the Department of Psychology. Marta is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Karolinska Institute and the lab of professor Mats J. Olsson. Congratulations Marta!
The Olfactus 2023 conference was hosted by the SCI-lab and our colleagues at the Gösta Ekman Laboratory. In this intensive 1-day conference, 43 participants attended. There were 17 talks, mostly by junior researchers and students, on a wide variety of chemical senses research topics. Some pictures from the event are available on the Gösta Ekman Laboratory facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/gelstockholm
The PI of the SCI-lab, Jonas Olofsson was awarded the AChemS Young Investigator Award for Research in Olfaction or Nasal Chemoreception by the Association for Chemoreception Sciences! The award is given to “an outstanding junior scientist whose research record should provide evidence of excellence and contributions that have had or are likely to have a major impact on research in the field of olfaction”. Jonas would like to thank all members of the SCI-lab, past and present for their excellent research contributions.
New SCI-Lab paper! Rohan Rajs work explains odor identification results with help from language models and human estimations. This work, which was recently published in Cognition, might help developing better odor assessments to detect early stage dementia.
Find ”Odor identification errors reveal cognitive aspects of age-associated smell loss” here.
Marta Zakrzewska, who recently graduated as a PhD from the lab and is now a postdoc at Karolinska Institute, found that body odor disgust sensitivity is associated with xenophobia across the world. This pre-registered research was recently published in Royal Society Open Science.
Jonas Olofsson has been invited as a keynote speaker at the Pangborn Sensory Symposium in Nantes, France (August 20-24).
Pangborn is an academic conference focusing on sensory science and consumer science (www.pangbornsymposium.com).
#Pangborn2023
”Nira Cedres’ paper; Subjective Impairments in Olfaction and Cognition Predict Dissociated Behavioral Outcomes, was highlighted as editor’s choice in the Journals of Gerontology” (link to paper)!
The study aimed to investigate the relationship and co-occurrence of self-rated subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and subjective olfactory impairment (SOI) and the results suggest that SOI and SCD occur independently and are associated with different cognitive and olfactory outcomes. The study highlights the need for further investigation into the underlying causes and the risk of future cognitive impairment. With a growing aging population, understanding the relationship between SCD and SOI is crucial for early detection and intervention of cognitive decline and dementia.
We were visited by documentary filmmaker Cosima Dannoritzer, as part of the production of her new project involving smell and memory.
Maria Larsson, head of Perception and Psychophysics, were interviewed for the documentary and SCI-LAB made its contribution to the segment. We hope you willl enjoy the documentary when it is released some time this summer!
We will announce when it is out in a new update.
Our recently published paper on our inhouse developed handheld olfactometer for use with VR has gained interest from several Swedish media sources.
We have been featured on Swedish TV, newspaper and Radio. Below you can find links to our appearances (Swedish):
SVT, Swedish public television: svt.se and svt.se
TV4 news: tv4play.se
P3 spel, Swedish public Radio: sverigesradio.se
Dagens nyheter, newspaper: dn.se
Here you can find our article in International Journal of Human-Computer Studies for more information: A graspable olfactory display for virtual reality
We have an article out in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies on our inhouse developed VR-compatible olfactometer (smell presenter).
This device allows for easier and robust odor presentation in VR-based environments. It can be used for research, smell training, wine tasting and gaming, as it allows intractions with odor-objects ingame.
Link to the article: A graspable olfactory display for virtual reality