Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

SMELL-S and SMELL-R: olfactory tests not influenced by odor-specific insensitivity or prior olfactory experience

View ORCID ProfileJulien W. Hsieh, View ORCID ProfileAndreas Keller, View ORCID ProfileMichele Wong, View ORCID ProfileRong-San Jiang, View ORCID ProfileLeslie B. Vosshall
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/161000
Julien W. Hsieh
1Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065 USA
2Rhinology and Olfaction Unit, Service of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Geneva University Hospitals, 4, rue Gabrielle-Perret-Gentil, CH-1211 Geneva 14 Switzerland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Julien W. Hsieh
  • For correspondence: hsiehjulien@gmail.com leslie.vosshall@rockefeller.edu
Andreas Keller
1Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065 USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Andreas Keller
Michele Wong
1Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065 USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Michele Wong
Rong-San Jiang
3Department of Otolaryngology, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, No. 1650, Section 4, Taiwan Blvd, Xitun District, Taichung City, Taiwan 407
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Rong-San Jiang
Leslie B. Vosshall
1Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065 USA
4Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New York, NY 10065 USA
5Kavli Neural Systems Institute, New York, NY 10065 USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Leslie B. Vosshall
  • For correspondence: hsiehjulien@gmail.com leslie.vosshall@rockefeller.edu
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Smell dysfunction is a common and underdiagnosed medical condition that can have serious consequences. It is also an early biomarker of Alzheimer’s disease that precedes detectable memory loss. Clinical tests that evaluate the sense of smell face two major challenges. First, human sensitivity to individual odorants varies significantly, leading to potential misdiagnosis of people with an otherwise normal sense of smell but insensitivity to the test odorant. Second, prior familiarity with odor stimuli can bias smell test performance. We have developed new non- semantic tests for olfactory sensitivity (SMELL-S) and olfactory resolution (SMELL-R) that overcome these challenges by using mixtures of odorants that have unfamiliar smells. The tests can be self-administered with minimal training and showed high test-retest reliability. Because SMELL-S uses odor mixtures rather than a single molecule, odor-specific insensitivity is averaged out. Indeed, SMELL-S accurately distinguished people with normal and dysfunctional smell. SMELL-R is a discrimination test in which the difference between two stimulus mixtures can be altered stepwise. This is an advance over current discrimination tests, which ask subjects to discriminate monomolecular odorants whose difference cannot be objectively calculated. SMELL-R showed significantly less bias in scores between North American and Taiwanese subjects than conventional semantically-based smell tests that need to be adapted and translated to different populations. We predict that SMELL-S and SMELL-R will be broadly effective in diagnosing smell dysfunction, including that associated with the earliest signs of memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease.

Significance statement Currently available smell testing methods can misdiagnose subjects with lack of prior experience or insensitivity to the odorants used in the test. This introduces a source of bias into clinical tests aimed at detecting patients with olfactory dysfunction. We have developed smell tests that use mixtures of 30 molecules that average out the variability in sensitivity to individual molecules. Because these mixtures have unfamiliar odors, and the tests are non-semantic, their use eliminates differences in test performance due to the familiarity with the smells or the words used to describe them. The SMELL-S and SMELL-R tests facilitate smell testing of diverse populations, without the need to adapt the test stimuli.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted July 08, 2017.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
SMELL-S and SMELL-R: olfactory tests not influenced by odor-specific insensitivity or prior olfactory experience
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
SMELL-S and SMELL-R: olfactory tests not influenced by odor-specific insensitivity or prior olfactory experience
Julien W. Hsieh, Andreas Keller, Michele Wong, Rong-San Jiang, Leslie B. Vosshall
bioRxiv 161000; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/161000
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
SMELL-S and SMELL-R: olfactory tests not influenced by odor-specific insensitivity or prior olfactory experience
Julien W. Hsieh, Andreas Keller, Michele Wong, Rong-San Jiang, Leslie B. Vosshall
bioRxiv 161000; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/161000

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4116)
  • Biochemistry (8820)
  • Bioengineering (6523)
  • Bioinformatics (23469)
  • Biophysics (11798)
  • Cancer Biology (9216)
  • Cell Biology (13327)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7440)
  • Ecology (11417)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15160)
  • Genetics (10442)
  • Genomics (14050)
  • Immunology (9176)
  • Microbiology (22170)
  • Molecular Biology (8817)
  • Neuroscience (47600)
  • Paleontology (350)
  • Pathology (1429)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2492)
  • Physiology (3733)
  • Plant Biology (8084)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1437)
  • Synthetic Biology (2221)
  • Systems Biology (6039)
  • Zoology (1254)