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Purpose: One of the long-term symptoms of COVID-19 is phantosmia, a type of Olfactory Disorder (OD) that has deleterious impacts on patients' quality of life. The aim of this article was to study how this poorly understood qualitative OD manifests itself in the COVID-19. Methods: 4691 patients with COVID-19 responded to our online questionnaire focusing on COVID-19-related OD. We first analyzed the prevalence of phantosmia in this population. Then, with the help of Natural Language Processing techniques, we investigated the qualitative descriptions of phantom smells by the 1723 respondents who reported phantosmia. Results: The prevalence of phantosmia was of 37%. Women were more likely to report phantosmia than men, as well as respondents for whom OD was described as fluctuating rather than permanent, lasted longer, was partial rather than total and appeared progressively rather than suddenly. The relationship between OD duration and phantosmia followed a logarithmic function, with a prevalence of phantosmia increasing strongly during the first 2 months of the disease before reaching a plateau and no decrease over the 15 months considered in this study. Qualitative analyses of phantosmia descriptions with a sentiment analysis revealed that the descriptions were negatively valenced for 78% of the respondents. Reference to "tobacco" was more frequent in non-smokers. Source names and odor characteristics were used differently according to age and OD duration. Conclusion: The results of this descriptive study of phantosmia contribute to the current efforts of the medical community to better understand and treat this rapidly increasing COVID-19-related OD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hedonic and social dimensions of olfactory perception are characterized by a great diversity across people. Whereas the cerebral processing underlying these aspects of odor perception have been widely explored in the last decades, very few brain imaging studies considered individual differences. This lack of consideration weakens the current models in the field, where the paradigm of universality is the norm. The present review is aimed at examining this issue. Through a synthetic summary, we will first present past studies suggesting that (1) hedonics are represented consistently throughout the olfactory system from primary to secondary areas, with a progressive cognitive modulation and integration with other senses, (2) social dimension of odors may be represented in a distinct pathway involving social and attentional networks. In a second, and more critical part, we will highlight the importance of individual differences for the cerebral study of human olfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many facial and vocal databases are available for research, very few of them have controlled the range of attractiveness of the stimuli that they offer. To fill this gap, we created the GEneva Faces and Voices (GEFAV) database, providing standardized faces (static and dynamic neutral, smiling) and voices (speaking sentences, vowels) of young European adults. A total of 61 women and 50 men 18-35 years old agreed to be part of the GEFAV stimuli, and two rating studies involving 285 participants provided evaluations of the facial and vocal samples. The final set of stimuli was satisfactory in terms of attractiveness range (wide and rather symmetrical distribution over the attractiveness continuum) and the reliability of the ratings (high consistency between the two rating studies, high interrater agreement in the final rating study). Moreover, the database showed an adequate validity, since a series of findings described by earlier research on human attractiveness were confirmed-namely, that facial and vocal attractiveness are predicted by femininity and health in women, and by masculinity, dominance, and trustworthiness in men. In future studies, the GEFAV stimuli may be used intact or transformed, individually or in multimodal combinations, to investigate a wide range of mechanisms, such as the behavioral, neuropsychological, and neurophysiological processes involved in social cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing effort is being made to understand how different attractive physical traits co-vary within individuals, partly because this might indicate an underlying index of genetic quality. In humans, attention has focused on potential markers of quality such as facial attractiveness, axillary odor quality, the second-to-fourth digit (2D:4D) ratio and body mass index (BMI). Here we extend this approach to include visually-assessed kinesic cues (nonverbal behavior linked to movement) which are statistically independent of structural physical traits. The utility of such kinesic cues in mate assessment is controversial, particularly during everyday conversational contexts, as they could be unreliable and susceptible to deception. However, we show here that the attractiveness of nonverbal behavior, in 20 male participants, is predicted by perceived quality of their axillary body odor. This finding indicates covariation between two desirable traits in different sensory modalities. Depending on two different rating contexts (either a simple attractiveness rating or a rating for long-term partners by 10 female raters not using hormonal contraception), we also found significant relationships between perceived attractiveness of nonverbal behavior and BMI, and between axillary odor ratings and 2D:4D ratio. Axillary odor pleasantness was the single attribute that consistently predicted attractiveness of nonverbal behavior. Our results demonstrate that nonverbal kinesic cues could reliably reveal mate quality, at least in males, and could corroborate and contribute to mate assessment based on other physical traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing evidence that human body odors are involved in adaptive behaviors, such as parental attachment in infants or partner choice in adults. The aim of the present study was to investigate changes in body-odor perception around puberty, a period largely ignored for odor-mediated behavioral changes, despite major changes in social needs and in odor emission and perception. Nine families with two children (8 pre-pubertal, aged 7–10, and 10 pubertal, aged 11–18) evaluated body odors of family members and unfamiliar individuals for pleasantness, intensity, and masculinity, and performed a recognition task. The hypothesized emergence of a parent–child mutual aversion for the odor of opposite-sex family members at puberty was not found, contradicting one of the few studies on the topic (Weisfeld et al., J. Exp. Child Psychol. 85:279-295, ). However, some developmental changes were observed, including reduced aversion for odor of the same-sex parent, and increased ability of adults, compared to children, to recognize odor of family members. Sex and personality (depressive and aggressive traits) also significantly influenced odor judgments. Further research with larger samples is needed to investigate the poorly explored issue of how olfactory perception of self and family members develops, and how it could correlate with normal reorganizations in social interactions at adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have investigated how children use their sense of smell in the varied contexts of their everyday life. In the present study, we used the Children’s Olfactory Behaviors in Everyday Life questionnaire (COBEL) to investigate developmental and inter-individual differences in attention and reactivity to odors. A total of 130 children (half males; grades 2, 4, and 5) from two European cities (Helsinki, Finland and Dijon, France) took part. Each answered either the French or the Finnish versions of the COBEL questionnaire and performed a cued identification test involving 12 common odorants. We assessed the effect of country, gender, and age on both reported olfactory behavior (total score and separate item scores of the COBEL) and identification performance. Girls and older children were clearly more oriented towards odors in their everyday behaviors and evinced better identification performance. Finnish children tended to report more attention and reactivity to odors. No differences were found between the identification performances of children from the first and the fourth quartiles of the COBEL score distribution (children classified as being among the least and the most reactive/attentive to odors). The COBEL questionnaire is thus complementary to classical, but less ecological, olfactory tests, and easily usable in different countries. The inter-individual variability highlighted by the COBEL corroborates previous findings and warrants further studies in more contrasted cultural groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]