| Popis: |
To investigate the changes of cortico-cortical connectivity during odor stimulation of subjectsclassified by occupations, the mutual information content in EEGs was examined for generalworkers, perfume salespersons, and professional perfume researchers. Analysis of mutualinformation content (MIC) in the EEGs revealed that, among the professional perfume researchers,changes in the MIC values during odor stimulation were more apparent in the frontal region of thebrain, although for the general workers group and perfume salespersons group such changes weremore conspicuous in the overall posterior temporal, parietal and frontal regions. These resultsindicated that the brains of professional perfume researchers responded to odors mainly in thefrontal region, reflecting the function of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) due to the occupationalrequirement of these subjects to discriminate or identify odors. During odor stimulation, theperfume salespersons, although relatively more exposed to odors than the general workers, showedsimilar changes to the general workers. MIC value was in inverse proportion to psychologicalpreferences of the professional perfume researchers and perfume salespersons, but this was notthe case with the general workers. This suggested that functional coupling for people who wereoccupationally exposed to odors related to psychological preference. |
