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An axis of good and awful in odor reception

Patchy variation in odor-evoked electrical activity in the human olfactory epithelium is found to correlate with stimulus pleasantness. This finding depends on a new technique for recording directly from awake humans.

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Figure 1: Two simple odor antipodes, goodness and badness, construct a hedonic olfactory axis in the olfactory epithelium.

Katie Vicari

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Correspondence to Marion E Frank.

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Frank, M., Hettinger, T. An axis of good and awful in odor reception. Nat Neurosci 14, 1360–1362 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2967

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