This 27-chapter volume arose from a symposium held in Lyon, France, in June of 1999, that sought to integrate information from academic scientific studies of olfaction, largely psychological in nature, with knowledge derived from the perfume industry. It is dedicated to the French perfumer Edmond Roudnitska, known for creating such classic fragrances as “Femme” (1944, Rochas), “Diorama” (1948, Dior), L'Eau” (1951, Hermès), “Diorissimo” (1956, Dior), “Eau Savage” (1966, Dior), and “Diorella” (1972, Dior), and addresses such topics as odor classification, odor memory, odor conditioning, and the plasticity of chemosensation.

This book is long overdue, as in recent years results from molecular biology have dominated the thinking of chemosensory scientists to the point of obscuring the fact that the brain is involved in establishing the identity, meaning, and affective nature of chemosensory stimuli, and that the significance of most odors is learned, not inherited. The quality of the chapters is higher than that traditionally associated with a symposium-based book; indeed, one would not have known of the book's association with a symposium had it not been mentioned in the introduction. With rare exception, the chapters are very good to outstanding, albeit often brief, and provide fresh insight from several quarters into important issues related to the processing, retention, and retrieval of chemosensory information.

The volume begins with a review by Annick Le Guèrer of the historical negativism directed towards odors and the sense of smell, beginning with the early Greeks and culminating with 20th century psychoanalysis. The negativism is further documented in a subsequent chapter by Catherine Rouby and Moustafa Bensafi, who point out ethnographic evidence that numerous languages have more negative than positive terms to describe odors. Chapters by André Holley and E.P. Köster address issues related to perfume creation and the functional nature of chemosensation, indicating, among other things, how odors come to signify objects (thereby reflecting a “nominal sense”), setting the stage for later discussions of odor memory, emotion, and odor classification. Fascinating anthropological studies are reviewed by David Howes, including those of the Ongee, a hunting and gathering society of Little Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal, who reportedly use smell as the primary sensory medium for expressing such concepts as time, space, and person.

A scholarly account—perhaps the best to date—of schemes for classifying odors is presented by Maurice Chastrette, followed by an important chapter by Dirk Hermans and Frank Baeyens on how odor meaning, particularly that related to hedonics, is largely acquired through conditioning. Rachel Herz eloquently reviews the influences of learning, including cultural factors, on the perception of the pleasantness of odors, noting, among other things, that (1) the hedonic responses of most children to odors mimic those of adults by the age of eight, (2) it is unlikely that odors exist that are “automatically liked without prior experience,” and (3) pleasant odors—indeed even the suggestion of their presence—tends to make people feel good, in contrast to unpleasant odors or their suggestion, which have the opposite effect and can even lead to reports of adverse health symptoms. Extensive discussions of odor memory paradigms are provided by Maria Larsson and by Sylvie Issanchou and associates, with the latter authors putting forth the argument that, because of the nature of odor memory in real life (e.g., typically unintentional), as well as problems associated with verbal encoding of representations of odorant stimuli, the most appropriate tests of odor memory should not direct a subject's attention to the stimuli during the encoding phase. Mats Olsson and his associates critically review the literature on odor priming, concluding that most “odor priming” effects in the literature likely reflect “name priming.” Johannes Lehrner and Peter Walla address developmental aspects of odor naming, whereas Benoist Schaal and his associates examine the influences of early pre- and post-natal learning on later odor preferences and other odor-related behaviors. In a provocative chapter, Robyn Hudson and Hans Distal describe an interesting, albeit preliminary, study suggesting that an individual's familiarity (and, thus, presumably exposure) with an odor may idiosyncratically influence its perceived intensity and pleasantness, leading to the hypothesis that individual and cultural factors significantly alter perceptual measures previously assumed to be rather invariant.

The influences of Alzheimer's disease, as well as aging, on odor memory and other functional measures are addressed in chapters by Steven Nordin and Claire Murphy, and by Thomas Hummel and his associates. Electrophysiological data regarding peripheral odor coding, odor-induced event-related potentials, and experience-related changes in neural activity in bulbar and higher-order olfactory structures are addressed in a series of chapters by Gilles Sicard, Bettina Pause, and Nadine Ravel et al., respectively. Edmund Rolls reviews the central anatomy of the olfactory and taste systems in primates, as well as the influences of motivational state on their function, whereas Robert Zatorre provides a brief chapter on functional imaging and the coding of odor-related affect in humans. Katharine Fast and colleagues provide a circumscribed review of taste psychophysics and the perception of taste bitterness, and Annick Faurion and her collaborators address issues of gustatory system plasticity at psychophysical and physiological levels, including studies of functional imaging. Chapters on linguistic expressions for odors in French and on “human pheromones” are contributed by Sophie David and Suma Jacob and associates, respectively.

Overall, this is an excellent treatise that provides a background for understanding conceptual issues related to higher-order olfactory processing in humans. Admittedly its focus is limited and few animal data are presented in support of many of the concepts that are presented, even though such data are available. Like most volumes based upon multiple authors, the integration of information between chapters could be better orchestrated, although surprisingly little overlap occurs among the chapters. In light of the theme of the overall volume and the symposium upon which it is based, the work probably would have been better served by leaving out the two chapters solely related to taste and the one chapter on “human pheromones,” and by including at least one chapter from a perfumer who has first-hand knowledge of the art of perfume creation.

I would recommend this book to all chemosensory scientists, as well as to psychologists and physiologists interested in higher-order cognitive processes associated with human olfaction. While this is not a book that provides information of much value to the practicing physician or clinical psychologist, it does provide a framework for future studies seeking to explain some olfactory deficits in patients with brain lesions or diseases involving central nervous system structures.