Olfactory Adaptation and Recovery in Old Age

Four experiments are reported in which it is shown that elderly adults are more prone than young adults to olfactory adaptation and are slower to recover threshold sensitivity. The first three experiments differed in detail, but had in common an initial threshold determination for 1-butanol, a 30 s exposure to a concentration twenty-seven times threshold, followed by repeated presentation of the initial threshold level at various intervals after adaptation. In three experiments accuracy of forced-choice discrimination was poor immediately after adaptation but tended to improve with time, and considerably faster in the young than in the elderly. In the fourth experiment, groups of twenty-three elderly and twenty-five young subjects threshold-matched for pyridine were compared. The subjects participated in three sessions in which pyridine was infused into a test chamber at either 2.5, 1.25, or 0 L min−1 (sham session). At 2.5 L min−1 both groups were able to track the buildup of odor intensity during infusion and its decline after infusion. In contrast, at 1.25 L min−1 only the young were able to track odor intensity, even though the concentration rose above initial threshold levels.