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Jacobs LF, Arter J, Cook A, et al. Olfactory Orientation and Navigation in Humans. PLoS One. 2015;10(6):e0129387doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129387.
Jacobs, L. F., Arter, J., Cook, A., & Sulloway, F. J. (2015). Olfactory Orientation and Navigation in Humans. PloS one, 10(6), e0129387. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0129387
Jacobs, Lucia F, et al. "Olfactory Orientation and Navigation in Humans." PloS one vol. 10,6 (2015): e0129387. doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0129387
Jacobs LF, Arter J, Cook A, Sulloway FJ. Olfactory Orientation and Navigation in Humans. PLoS One. 2015 Jun 17;10(6):e0129387. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129387. eCollection 2015. PMID: 26083337; PMCID: PMC4470656.
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PLoS One. 2015 Jun 17;10(6):e0129387. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129387. eCollection 2015.

Olfactory Orientation and Navigation in Humans.

PloS one

Lucia F Jacobs, Jennifer Arter, Amy Cook, Frank J Sulloway

Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America.

PMID: 26083337 PMCID: PMC4470656 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129387

Abstract

Although predicted by theory, there is no direct evidence that an animal can define an arbitrary location in space as a coordinate location on an odor grid. Here we show that humans can do so. Using a spatial match-to-sample procedure, humans were led to a random location within a room diffused with two odors. After brief sampling and spatial disorientation, they had to return to this location. Over three conditions, participants had access to different sensory stimuli: olfactory only, visual only, and a final control condition with no olfactory, visual, or auditory stimuli. Humans located the target with higher accuracy in the olfaction-only condition than in the control condition and showed higher accuracy than chance. Thus a mechanism long proposed for the homing pigeon, the ability to define a location on a map constructed from chemical stimuli, may also be a navigational mechanism used by humans.

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