Respiratory phase orchestrates human olfactory cortical dynamics.

Respiratory phase organizes odor-evoked cortical dynamics in humans, with theta activity during inhalation and alpha activity during exhalation enabling reliable odor detection.

• Why it matters: Odor processing in the human brain is not well understood, and conventional time-locking can miss effects tied to natural breathing variability.
• What they did: In [Formula: see text] participants, simultaneous nasal respiration and electroencephalography recorded respiratory phase-locked event-related spectral perturbations to peppermint, oregano, and grapefruit synchronized to individual breathing cycles.
• The result: Leave-one-subject-out decoding of RPL-ERSPs generalized across individuals (peppermint AUC [Formula: see text] 0.79; oregano AUC [Formula: see text] 0.67; grapefruit AUC [Formula: see text] 0.62) and matched odor recognition strength, supporting RPL-ERSPs as a sensitive, task-free olfactory assessment.

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