Papers by Sanne Boesveldt
The Journal of nutrition, 2014
Understanding overconsumption starts with knowledge of how separate factors influence our eating ... more Understanding overconsumption starts with knowledge of how separate factors influence our eating behavior. Food cues such as food odors are known for their effect on general appetite and sensory-specific appetite (SSA). Active sniffing rather than passive exposure may induce satiation over time. The objective of this study was to investigate how actively sniffing banana odors affects general appetite, SSA, and subsequent food intake. In a crossover study, 61 women actively smelled cups containing natural banana, artificial banana odor, or water (no odor) for 10 min. Treatment order was randomly assigned as much as possible. General appetite and SSA were monitored by using 100-mm visual analog scales during the 10 min of active sniffing, followed by ad libitum intake of banana milkshake. Results showed that SSA was consistently high (+12 mm) during actively sniffing natural or artificial banana odors, with no decrease in SSA over time. Sniffing both banana odors increased the appetit...
PLoS ONE, 2014
Colors and odors are associated; for instance, people typically match the smell of strawberries t... more Colors and odors are associated; for instance, people typically match the smell of strawberries to the color pink or red. These associations are forms of crossmodal correspondences. Recently, there has been discussion about the extent to which these correspondences arise for structural reasons (i.e., an inherent mapping between color and odor), statistical reasons (i.e., covariance in experience), and/or semantically-mediated reasons (i.e., stemming from language). The present study probed this question by testing color-odor correspondences in 6 different cultural groups (Dutch, Netherlands-residing-Chinese, German, Malay, Malaysian-Chinese, and US residents), using the same set of 14 odors and asking participants to make congruent and incongruent color choices for each odor. We found consistent patterns in color choices for each odor within each culture, showing that participants were making non-random color-odor matches. We used representational dissimilarity analysis to probe for variations in the patterns of color-odor associations across cultures; we found that US and German participants had the most similar patterns of associations, followed by German and Malay participants. The largest group differences were between Malay and Netherlands-resident Chinese participants and between Dutch and Malaysian-Chinese participants. We conclude that culture plays a role in color-odor crossmodal associations, which likely arise, at least in part, through experience.
Understanding overconsumption starts with knowledge of how separate factors influence our eating ... more Understanding overconsumption starts with knowledge of how separate factors influence our eating behavior. Food cues such as food odors are known for their effect on general appetite and sensory-specific appetite (SSA). Active sniffing rather than passive exposure may induce satiation over time. The objective of this study was to investigate how actively sniffing banana odors affects general appetite, SSA, and subsequent food intake. In a crossover study, 61 women actively smelled cups containing natural banana, artificial banana odor, or water (no odor) for 10 min. Treatment order was randomly assigned as much as possible. General appetite and SSA were monitored by using 100-mm visual analog scales during the 10 min of active sniffing, followed by ad libitum intake of banana milkshake. Results showed that SSA was consistently high (+12 mm) during actively sniffing natural or artificial banana odors, with no decrease in SSA over time. Sniffing both banana odors increased the appetit...
International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2015
Habituation of responses to chemosensory signals has been explored in many ways. Strong habituati... more Habituation of responses to chemosensory signals has been explored in many ways. Strong habituation and adaptation processes can be observed at the various levels of processing. For example, with repeated exposure, amplitudes of chemosensory event-related potentials (ERP) decrease over time. However, long-term habituation has not been investigated so far and investigations of differences in habituation between trigeminal and olfactory ERPs are very rare. The present study investigated habituation over a period of approximately 80 min for two olfactory and one trigeminal stimulus, respectively. Habituation was examined analyzing the N1 and P2 amplitudes and latencies of chemosensory ERPs and intensity ratings. It was shown that amplitudes of both componentsand intensity ratingsdecreased from the first to the last block. Concerning ERP latencies no effects of habituation were seen. Amplitudes of trigeminal ERPs diminished faster than amplitudes of olfactory ERPs, indicating that the habituation of trigeminal ERPs is stronger than habituation of olfactory ERPs. Amplitudes of trigeminal ERPs were generally higher than amplitudes of olfactory ERPs, as it has been shown in various studies before. The results reflect relatively selective central changes in response to chemosensory stimuli over time.
Colors and odors are associated; for instance, people typically match the smell of strawberries t... more Colors and odors are associated; for instance, people typically match the smell of strawberries to the color pink or red. These associations are forms of crossmodal correspondences. Recently, there has been discussion about the extent to which these correspondences arise for structural reasons (i.e., an inherent mapping between color and odor), statistical reasons (i.e., covariance in experience), and/or semantically-mediated reasons (i.e., stemming from language). The present study probed this question by testing color-odor correspondences in 6 different cultural groups (Dutch, Netherlands-residing-Chinese, German, Malay, Malaysian-Chinese, and US residents), using the same set of 14 odors and asking participants to make congruent and incongruent color choices for each odor. We found consistent patterns in color choices for each odor within each culture, showing that participants were making non-random color-odor matches. We used representational dissimilarity analysis to probe for variations in the patterns of color-odor associations across cultures; we found that US and German participants had the most similar patterns of associations, followed by German and Malay participants. The largest group differences were between Malay and Netherlands-resident Chinese participants and between Dutch and Malaysian-Chinese participants. We conclude that culture plays a role in color-odor crossmodal associations, which likely arise, at least in part, through experience.
PLoS ONE, 2014
The desire to consume high volumes of fat is thought to originate from an evolutionary pressure t... more The desire to consume high volumes of fat is thought to originate from an evolutionary pressure to hoard calories, and fat is among the few energy sources that we can store over a longer time period. From an ecological perspective, however, it would be beneficial to detect fat from a distance, before ingesting it. Previous results indicate that humans detect high concentrations of fatty acids by their odor. More important though, would be the ability to detect fat content in real food products. In a series of three sequential experiments, using study populations from different cultures, we demonstrated that individuals are able to reliably detect fat content of food via odors alone. Over all three experiments, results clearly demonstrated that humans were able to detect minute differences between milk samples with varying grades of fat, even when embedded within a milk odor. Moreover, we found no relation between this performance and either BMI or dairy consumption, thereby suggesting that this is not a learned ability or dependent on nutritional traits. We argue that our findings that humans can detect the fat content of food via odors may open up new and innovative future paths towards a general reduction in our fat intake, and future studies should focus on determining the components in milk responsible for this effect. Citation: Boesveldt S, Lundströ m JN (2014) Detecting Fat Content of Food from a Distance: Olfactory-Based Fat Discrimination in Humans. PLoS ONE 9(1): e85977.
Movement Disorders, 2008
The aim of this study was to compare the characteristics of odor discrimination and odor identifi... more The aim of this study was to compare the characteristics of odor discrimination and odor identification deficits in a large population of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and to determine which of these olfactory tests best distinguishes between patients with PD and control subjects. Olfactory performance was assessed in 404 patients with PD and 150 controls, using the odor identification and discrimination parts of the Sniffin' Sticks battery. Mean identification and discrimination scores in patients with PD were significantly lower than in controls. Linear regression analysis using a 95% confidence interval revealed that, relative to the performance of controls, 65.0% of patients with PD had an impairment in odor identification, whereas 42.1% of patients were impaired on the odor discrimination task. ROC curves revealed a higher sensitivity and specificity for odor identification than for odor discrimination in separating patients from controls. In patients with PD, odor discrimination performance decreased with increasing disease duration, whereas odor identification was not correlated with disease stage or duration. In PD, odor identification is more frequently impaired than odor discrimination and allows a better discrimination between patients and controls. Although an odor identification deficit is generally believed to be independent of disease progression, the impairment in odor discrimination appears to increase with disease duration.
Movement Disorders, 2009
The aim of this study was to determine whether extended olfactory testing within a single olfacto... more The aim of this study was to determine whether extended olfactory testing within a single olfactory task and/ or across olfactory tasks increases diagnostic accuracy of olfactory testing in Parkinson's disease (PD). Olfactory function was assessed using an extended version of the ''Sniffin' Sticks'', comprising 32-item odor identification and discrimination tasks, and a detection threshold task in 52 PD patients and 50 controls, all aged between 49 and 78 years. ROC curves based on sensitivity and specificity estimates were used to compare the diagnostic accuracy of extended and combined olfactory testing. There was no significant difference in diagnostic accuracy between the 16-item and the 32item versions of the odor identification or discrimination test.
Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 2012
Background: Most existing olfactory identification (ID) tests have the primary aim of diagnosing ... more Background: Most existing olfactory identification (ID) tests have the primary aim of diagnosing clinical olfactory dysfunction, thereby rendering them sub-optimal for experimental settings where the aim is to detect differences in healthy subjects' odor ID abilities. Materials and methods: We have developed an extended version of the olfactory ID subtest of the Sniffin' Sticks test battery to better assess the variability in ID scores and thereby olfactory abilities of healthy, adult individuals. Twenty-four odorants, corresponding cue labels, and distractor labels were added to the existing 16-item Sniffin' Sticks ID test to create the 40-item Monell Extended Sniffin' Sticks Identification Test (MONEX-40). The MONEX-40 was administered to 259 healthy young subjects, of which 72 were retested on an average of 212 days (SD 112 days) later.
Journal of Neural Transmission, 2009
The results of previous studies in small groups of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients are inconclu... more The results of previous studies in small groups of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients are inconclusive with regard to the presence of an odor recognition memory impairment in PD. The aim of the present study was to investigate odor recognition memory in PD in a larger group of patients. Odor recognition memory and detection thresholds were assessed using components of the ''Sniffin' Sticks'' test battery in 55 non-demented PD patients (Hoehn and Yahr stages I-III) and 50 control subjects of comparable age and sex. PD patients performed slightly but significantly worse than control subjects on the odor recognition memory task. After correction for odor detection scores, however, the difference in odor recognition memory performance between PD patients and controls was no longer statistically significant. These data indicate that odor recognition memory is not independently impaired in PD patients.
International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2010
Many human olfactory experiments call for fast and stable stimulus-rise times as well as exact an... more Many human olfactory experiments call for fast and stable stimulus-rise times as well as exact and stable stimulus-onset times. Due to these temporal demands, an olfactometer is often needed. However, an olfactometer is a piece of equipment that either comes with a high price tag or requires a high degree of technical expertise to build and/or to run. Here, we detail the construction of an olfactometer that is constructed almost exclusively with "off-the-shelf" parts, requires little technical knowledge to build, has relatively low price tags, and is controlled by E-Prime, a turnkey-ready and easily-programmable software commonly used in psychological experiments. The olfactometer can present either solid or liquid odor sources, and it exhibits a fast stimulus-rise time and a fast and stable stimulus-onset time. We provide a detailed description of the olfactometer construction, a list of its individual parts and prices, as well as potential modifications to the design. In addition, we present odor onset and concentration curves as measured with a photo-ionization detector, together with corresponding GC/MS analyses of signal-intensity drop (5.9%) over a longer period of use. Finally, we present data from behavioral and psychophysiological recordings demonstrating that the olfactometer is suitable for use during event-related EEG experiments.
Human Brain Mapping, 2009
Objectives: To determine whether time-series analysis of magnetoencephalography (MEG) data is a s... more Objectives: To determine whether time-series analysis of magnetoencephalography (MEG) data is a suitable method to study brain activity related to olfactory information processing, and to detect differences in odor-induced brain activity between patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and controls. Methods: Whole head 151-channel MEG recordings were obtained in 21 controls and 20 patients with PD during a 10-min olfactory stimulus paradigm, consisting of 10 alternating rest-stimulus cycles (30 s each), using phenylethyl alcohol administered by means of a Burghart olfactometer. Relative spectral power and synchronization likelihood (SL; an unbiased measure of functional connectivity) were calculated for delta, theta, alpha1, alpha2, beta, and gamma frequency bands. Results: In controls, olfactory stimulation produced an increase in theta power and a decrease in beta power. In patients with PD, there was a decrease in alpha1 power. No significant interaction between group and condition was found for spectral power. SL analysis revealed a significantly different response to olfactory stimulation in patients with PD compared to controls. In controls, the odor stimulus induced a decrease in local beta band SL. The response in patients with PD involved a decrease in intrahemispheric alpha2 band SL. Conclusion: This is the first study to show that time-series analysis of MEG data, including spectral power and SL, can be used to detect odor-induced changes in brain activity. In addition, differences in odor-induced brain activity were found between patients with PD and controls using analysis of SL, but not of spectral power. Hum Brain Mapp 30:3020-3030, 2009. V V C 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. in Wiley InterScience (www. interscience.wiley.com). V V C 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. r Human Brain Mapping 30:3020-3030 (2009) r r MEG Analysis of Odor-Induced Brain Activity r r 3021 r r Boesveldt et al. r r 3022 r
Human Brain Mapping, 2011
Over the last two decades, neuroimaging methods have identified a variety of taste-responsive bra... more Over the last two decades, neuroimaging methods have identified a variety of taste-responsive brain regions. Their precise location, however, remains in dispute. For example, taste stimulation activates areas throughout the insula and overlying operculum, but identification of subregions has been inconsistent. Furthermore, literature reviews and summaries of gustatory brain activations tend to reiterate rather than resolve this ambiguity. Here, we used a new meta-analytic method [activation likelihood estimation (ALE)] to obtain a probability map of the location of gustatory brain activation across 15 studies. The map of activation likelihood values can also serve as a source of independent coordinates for future region-of-interest analyses. We observed significant cortical activation probabilities in: bilateral anterior insula and overlying frontal operculum, bilateral mid dorsal insula and overlying Rolandic operculum, and bilateral posterior insula/parietal operculum/postcentral gyrus, left lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), right medial OFC, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (prACC) and right mediodorsal thalamus. This analysis confirms the involvement of multiple cortical areas within insula and overlying operculum in gustatory processing and provides a functional ''taste map'' which can be used as an inclusive mask in the data analyses of future studies. In light of this new analysis, we discuss human central processing of gustatory stimuli and identify topics where increased research effort is warranted. Hum Brain Mapp 00:000-000, View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. V C 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc. r Identification of Human Gustatory Cortex r r 5 r r Identification of Human Gustatory Cortex r r 9 r
Biological Psychology, 2010
Behavioural Brain Research, 2014
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Papers by Sanne Boesveldt