Chemosensory attention, habituation and detection in women and men.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether there are differences between women and men in how chemosensory stimuli are processed. Event-related potentials from 36 participants (18 men) showed that women had larger P3 amplitudes when attending, but not when ignoring CO(2) and amyl acetate stimuli compared with men. Conversely, auditory P3 was reduced by the same degree in women and men. No gender differences were found in magnitude estimations over time. Women had lower detection thresholds for CO(2), but not for n-butanol, compared with men. The main finding was that women and men differ in cognitive measures of chemosensory processing.
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