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  • KSBNS 2024

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Original Article

Exp Neurobiol 2024; 33(5): 238-250

Published online October 31, 2024

https://doi.org/10.5607/en24020

© The Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences

The Impact of Odor Category Similarity on Multimedia Experience

Kwangsu Kim1,2, Jisub Bae3, JeeWon Lee4, Sun Ae Moon4, Sang-Ho Lee1,5, Won-Seok Kang1,5 and Cheil Moon1,4*

1Convergence Research Advanced Centre for Olfaction, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Daegu 42988, Korea, 2Smell and Taste Clinic, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden 01307, Germany, 3Center for Cognition and Sociality, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Daejeon 34126, Korea, 4Department of Brain Sciences, Graduate School, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Daegu 42988, Korea, 5Division of Intelligent Robot, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Daegu 42988, Korea

Correspondence to: *To whom correspondence should be addressed.
TEL: 82-53-785-6110, FAX: 82-53-785-6109
e-mail: cmoon@dgist.ac.kr

Received: August 22, 2024; Revised: October 27, 2024; Accepted: November 14, 2024

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Although we have multiple senses, multimedia mainly targets vision and olfaction. To expand the senses impacted by multimedia, olfactory stimulation has been used to enhance the sense of reality. Odors are primarily matched with objects in scenes. However, it is impractical to select all odors that match all objects in a scene and offer them to viewers. As an alternative, offering a single odor in a category as representative of other odors belonging to that category has been suggested. However, it is unclear whether viewers’ responses to videos with multiple odors (e.g., rose, lavender, and lily) from a category (e.g., flowers) are comparable. Therefore, we studied whether odors belonging to a given category could be similar in behavioral congruency and in the five frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma) of electroencephalogram (EEG) data collected while viewers watched videos. We conducted questionnaires and EEG experiments to understand the effects of similar odors belonging to categories. Our results showed that similar odors in a specific odor category were more congruent with videos than those in different odor categories. In our EEG data, the delta and theta bands were mainly clustered when odors were offered to viewers in similar categories. The theta band is known to be primarily related to the neural signals of odor information. Our studies showed that choosing odors based on odor categories in multimedia can be feasible.

Graphical Abstract


Keywords: EEG, Olfactory perception, Multimedia, Cluster analysis, Machine learning