Determining whether odorants can be perceived in an odour mixture or whether the mixture smells different from its components remains challenging. Even in highly complex mixtures, the odour qualities of some elements can be perceived; thus, their identity is conserved within the mixture. Such elements are considered key components and support the elemental perception of the mixture. The concept of key components is also related to elements that do not necessarily carry the odour quality of the mixture but that induce a change in overall mixture perception when they are omitted. In this case, mixture perception often relies on configural processing. To disentangle these multiple aspects of these so‐called key odorants, we sought to study the perceptual role of odorants included in mixtures that are elementally or configurally perceived. Two mixtures, known to be processed configurally and elementally and containing the same 6 odorants in different proportions, were used as references in 4 similarity‐rating experiments. A total of 246 participants evaluated the similarity between the references and single odorants or mixtures of 2 to 6 odorants. This procedure aimed to evaluate whether single odorants or combinations of odorants can evoke the odour quality of the mixtures. Overall, the results highlighted that elemental perception depended primarily on the odour quality and concentration ratio of many of the mixed odorants, whereas configural perception depended on specific associations of odorants in strict concentration ratios. These results led us to reconsider the impact of key elements in odour mixtures within the framework of a perceptual model stating that elemental perception of odour mixtures relies on perception of key odorants, the perceptual features of which are still perceived within the mixture, whereas configural perception relies on key associations of odorants that lose their individual identity when mixed at specific concentration ratios.

中文翻译：

---

关键气味或关键联系？洞悉基本和配置式气味处理

确定气味混合物中是否能感觉到气味或混合物闻起来是否不同于其成分仍然具有挑战性。即使在高度复杂的混合物中，也可以感觉到某些元素的气味。因此，它们的身份在混合物中得以保留。这些元素被认为是关键成分，并支持对混合物的元素感知。关键成分的概念还与不一定具有混合物气味品质的元素有关，但是当省略这些元素时，它们会引起总体混合物感的变化。在这种情况下，混合感知通常依赖于配置处理。为了弄清这些所谓的关键气味剂的多个方面，我们试图研究元素或结构感知的混合物中所含气味剂的感知作用。在4个相似度评估实验中，使用了已知的两种混合物，这些混合物经过配置和元素处理，并包含相同的6种不同比例的增香剂。共有246名参与者评估了参比品与单一加香剂或2至6种加香剂混合物之间的相似性。该程序旨在评估单一加味剂或加味剂组合是否会引起混合物的气味质量。总体而言，结果强调，元素感知主要取决于许多混合气味剂的气味质量和浓度比，而结构感知取决于严格浓度比的气味剂的特定关联。关键气味剂，其感官特征仍在混合物中被感知，而结构感知则依赖于以特定浓度比混合时失去其个性的气味剂的关键关联。