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Olfactory consciousness across disciplines

Andreas Keller, B. D. Young

Frontiers in Psychology August 22, 2014 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00931 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Review Peer reviewed
Key findings Olfaction's simplicity and distinctiveness make it an ideal system for testing theories of consciousness.

Abstract

Although vision is the de facto model system of consciousness research, studying olfactory consciousness has its own advantages, as this collection of articles emphatically demonstrates. One advantage of olfaction is its computational and phenomenological simplicity, which facilitates the identification of basic principles. Other researchers study olfactory consciousness not because of its simplicity, but because of its unique features. Together, olfaction's simplicity and its distinctiveness make it an ideal system for testing theories of consciousness. In this research topic, the results of recent research into olfactory consciousness are presented.