Smelling sensations: olfactory crossmodal correspondences

Abstract

10Crossmodal correspondences are the associations between apparently distinct stimuli in different 11 sensory modalities. These associations, albeit surprising, are generally shared in most of the population. 12Olfaction is ingrained in the fabric of our daily life and constitutes an integral part of our perceptual 13 reality, with olfaction being more commonly used in the entertainment and analytical domains, it is 14 crucial to uncover the robust correspondences underlying common aromatic compounds. Towards this 15 end, we investigated an aggregate of crossmodal correspondences between ten olfactory stimuli and 16 other modalities (angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, pleasantness, pitch, colours, musical 17 genres and emotional dimensions) using a large sample of 68 observers. We uncover the 18 correspondences between these modalities and extent of these associations with respect to the explicit 19 knowledge of the respective aromatic compound. The results revealed the robustness of prior studies, 20 as well as, contributions towards olfactory integration between an aggregate of other dimensions. The 21 knowledge of an odour's identity coupled with the multisensory perception of the odours indicates that 22 these associations, for the most part, are relatively robust and do not rely on explicit knowledge of the 23 odour. Through principal component analysis of the perceptual ratings, new cross-model mediations 24 have been uncovered between odours and their intercorrelated sensory dimensions. Our results 25 demonstrate a collective of associations between olfaction and other dimensions, potential cross modal 26mediations via exploratory factor analysis and the robustness of these correspondence with respect to 27 the explicit knowledge of an odour. We anticipate the findings reported in this paper could be used as 28 a psychophysical framework aiding in a collective of applications ranging from olfaction enhanced 29 multimedia to marketing.

Artificial Odour-Vision Syneasthesia via Olfactory Sensory Argumentation

“…Thus the proposed solution can help augment interactive experiences with more refined multisensorial capabilities leading to more engaging and enriched experiences, better designs, and more transparent human-machine interfaces. As well as, providing a framework for human in the loop odour localisation, real-time feature identification (e.g., [36], [37]), enhanced information recall, and improved human cognition (e.g., [38]). We hypothesise that these shape and colour mappings could be learnt over time with usage of the system (increasing both olfactory identification and colour discrimination, see [12]), similar to sensory substitution systems (i.e., [39]) where participants learnt to associate sound patterns to images from the real world.…”

Predicting the colour associated with odours using an electronic nose

“…In our prior work [12], we explored a range of olfactory crossmodal correspondences. One of these was the perceived colour of odours.…”

“…Odours were prepared in the same manner as reported in [12], using the same volume (4 mL) and brand when the perceptual data was initially collected. Odours were placed inside the e-nose, the lid was closed and recorded for 10 minutes, the container was flushed with ambient air for a minimum of 30 minutes between recordings.…”

“…Crossmodal correspondences can be defined as the consistent associations between stimulus features in different sensory modalities [10]. An example of such associations is between odours: colours and the smoothness of texture [12]. Recently it has been shown that the perceived pleasantness of odours can be predicted using e-nose technology [3,13], highlighting the possibility of predicting crossmodal odour associations using the underlying chemical features.…”