OLFACTORY CONSCIOUSNESS ACROSS DISCIPLINES Topic Editors Benjamin D. Young and Andreas Keller PSYCHOLOGY FRONTIERS COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ABOUT FRONTIERS © Copyright 2007-2015 Frontiers is more than just an open-access publisher of scholarly articles: it is a pioneering Frontiers Media SA. All rights reserved. approach to the world of academia, radically improving the way scholarly research is managed. All content included on this site, such as The grand vision of Frontiers is a world where all people have an equal opportunity to seek, share text, graphics, logos, button icons, images, and generate knowledge. Frontiers provides immediate and permanent online open access to all video/audio clips, downloads, data compilations and software, is the property its publications, but this alone is not enough to realize our grand goals. of or is licensed to Frontiers Media SA (“Frontiers”) or its licensees and/or subcontractors. 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WHAT ARE FRONTIERS RESEARCH TOPICS? For the full conditions see the Conditions Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are for Authors and the Conditions for Website Use. collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot ISSN 1664-8714 research area! ISBN 978-2-88919-422-3 Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an DOI 10.3389/978-2-88919-422-3 author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: [email protected] Frontiers in Psychology March 2015 | Olfactory Consciousness across Disciplines | 1 OLFACTORY CONSCIOUSNESS ACROSS DISCIPLINES Topic Editor: Benjamin D. Young, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Israel Andreas Keller, Rockefeller University and CUNY, The Graduate Center, USA Our sense of smell pervasively influences our most common behaviors and daily experience, yet little is known about olfactory consciousness. Over the past decade and a half research in both the fields of Consciousness Studies and Olfaction has blossomed, however, olfactory consciousness has received little to no attention. The olfactory systems unique anatomy, functional organization, sensory processes, and perceptual experiences offers a fecund area for exploring all aspects of consciousness, as well as a external perspective for re-examining the assumptions of contemporary theories of consciousness. It has even been suggested that the olfactory system may represent the minimal neuroanatomy that is required for conscious processing. Given the variegated nature of research on consciousness, we include original papers concerning the nature of olfactory Vials containing different mixtures of odorants consciousness. The scope of the special edition are used in psychophysical experiments that widely incorporates olfaction as it relates probe olfactory perception. to Consciousness, Awareness, Attention, Credit: Zach Veilleux/The Rockefeller University Phenomenal- or Access-Consciousness, and Qualia. Research concerning olfaction and cross-modal integration as it relates to conscious experience is also address. As the initial foray into this uncharted area of research, we include contributions from across all disciplines contributing to cognitive neuroscience, including neurobiology, neurology, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer sciences. It is our hope that this Research Topic will serve as the impetus for future interdisciplinary research on olfaction and consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology March 2015 | Olfactory Consciousness across Disciplines | 2 Table of Contents 04 Olfactory Consciousness Across Disciplines Andreas Keller and Benjamin D. Young 06 Reid on Olfaction and Secondary Qualities Jake Quilty-Dunn 17 The Evolutionary Function of Conscious Information Processing is Revealed by Its Task-Dependency in the Olfactory System Andreas Keller 24 The Olfactory System as the Gateway to the Neural Correlates of Consciousness Christina Merrick, Christine A. Godwin, Mark W. Geisler and Ezequiel Morsella 39 Human Olfactory Consciousness and Cognition: Its Unusual Features May not Result From Unusual Functions but From Limited Neocortical Processing Resources Richard J. Stevenson and Tuki Attuquayefio 51 Same Same But Different: The Case of Olfactory Imagery Artin Arshamian and Maria Larsson 59 Smelling Phenomenal Benjamin D. Young 68 The Intentionality of Smell William G. Lycan 76 The Illusion Confusion Clare Batty 87 Olfaction, Valuation, and Action: Reorienting Perception Jason B. Castro and William P. Seeley 91 Time to Smell: A Cascade Model of Human Olfactory Perception Based on Response-Time (RT) Measurement Jonas K. Olofsson 99 Multiple Sources of Conscious Odor Integration and Propagation in Olfactory Cortex Bernard J. Baars 103 Olfactory Consciousness and Gamma Oscillation Couplings Across the Olfactory Bulb, Olfactory Cortex, and Orbitofrontal Cortex Kensaku Mori, Hiroyuki Manabe, Kimiya Narikiyo and Naomi Onisawa 116 Quality-Space Theory in Olfaction Benjamin D. Young, Andreas Keller and David Rosenthal Frontiers in Psychology March 2015 | Olfactory Consciousness across Disciplines | 3 EDITORIAL published: 22 August 2014 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00931 Olfactory consciousness across disciplines Andreas Keller 1 and Benjamin D. Young 2* 1 Philosophy Program, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA 2 The Department of Cognitive and Brain Science, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel *Correspondence: [email protected] Edited and reviewed by: Anil K. Seth, University of Sussex, UK Keywords: olfaction, smell, consciousness, theories of consciousness, perceptual consciousness Although vision is the de facto model system of consciousness to voluntarily experiencing smells in the absence of the phys- research, studying olfactory consciousness has its own advan- ical stimulus is the topic of ongoing research. Stevenson and tages, as this collection of articles emphatically demonstrates. One Attuquayefio review the relevant literature and conclude that advantage of olfaction is its computational and phenomenologi- olfactory imagery is not possible (Stevenson and Attuquayefio, cal simplicity, which facilitates the identification of basic princi- 2013). In contrast, Arshamian and Larsson argue that some ples. Other researchers study olfactory consciousness not because individuals are capable of imagining smells (Arshamian and of its simplicity, but because of its unique features. Together, Larsson, 2014). Young (2014) sides with Arshamian and Larsson. olfaction’s simplicity and its distinctiveness make it an ideal sys- According to Young, the fact that experiences during olfactory tem for testing theories