Patent ID: 11931149
Assignee: FIRMENICH SA
Field: Medical technology (Instruments)
Classification: CPC A  G | IPC A  G

Claim 0:
1. A method for determining at least two brain activation patterns related to at least two elicited feelings for a group of subjects smelling odorants, said method comprising the following steps:
(i) Providing at least two odorants;
(ii) Submitting a group of subjects to at least two odorants, each in turn, in a MRI scanner;
(iii) Performing functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of the brain of each subject smelling each odorant in turn to determine a brain activation to each odorant for each subject,
(iv) Optionally, reiterating step (iii) and identifying an average brain response to each odorant,
(v) Once step (iii) or (iv) is completed, submitting the group of subjects to an evaluation of feelings evoked by each odorant based on a declarative method, wherein a perceived intensity of at least two feeling descriptors are rated on a continuous scale;
(vi) Rating and averaging the perceived intensity of the at least two feeling descriptors reported by the group of subjects for each odorant based on said declarative method, wherein the feeling descriptors are not restricted to the affective dimension of valence, thereby obtaining descriptor rating scores,
(vii) Performing a statistical method using the descriptor rating scores obtained in step (vi) across the odorants to obtain a brain activation pattern associated to each descriptor;
wherein feelings evoked by the at least two odorants are defined by at least 6 descriptors.