RESUMO
An odor description task was used to explore age-related change in odor perception based on 1.19 million U.S. and Canadian respondents (ages 10-90 years) to the National Geographic Smell Survey. Respondents sampled six microencapsulated odorants and selected 1 of 11 descriptors to characterize each smell. Four odors were characterized by strong consensus endorsement of a single descriptor. This consensus weakened with advancing age, and nonmodal descriptors were endorsed more frequently. Nonmodal responses were neither randomly selected, nor systematically biased across odors. Rather, they showed odor-specific patterns of change. Together, these results suggest a marked change in odor categorization across the life span. Odor descriptor profiles were used to generate age-specific multidimensional scaling maps. Stimulus configurations were stable from the third through fifth decades. Those from the sixth through ninth decades showed major displacements for two odors, and suggest that the sweet dimension of odor quality may be particularly variable with maturation.
Assuntos
Envelhecimento/fisiologia , Olfato/fisiologia , Adolescente , Adulto , Idoso , Idoso de 80 Anos ou mais , Androstenos/química , Benzopiranos/química , Criança , Eugenol/química , Humanos , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Odorantes , Transtornos do Olfato/fisiopatologia , Pentanóis/química , Perfumes/química , Plantas Medicinais , Compostos de Sulfidrila/químicaRESUMO
8 patients participating in an outpatient program for chronic alcohol abuse and 8 age-matched controls were tested for olfactory function. There was a significant difference between the two groups on a match-to-sample test using uncommon odors but not on a smell identification test using common odors. Ability to detect and identify common odors does not appear to be impaired by chronic alcohol abuse. Deficits on the odor-matching task may be related to difficulty in encoding olfactory information rather than a primary olfactory deficit.