The investigation of olfactory stimuli has become more prominent in the context of neuromarketing research over the last couple of years. Although a few studies suggest that olfactory stimuli are linked with consumer behavior and can be observed in various ways, such as via electroencephalogram (EEG), a universal method for the detection of olfactory stimuli has not been established yet. In this study, 14-channel EEG signals acquired from participants while they were presented with 2 identical boxes, scented and unscented, were processed to extract several linear and nonlinear features. Two approaches are presented for the classification of scented and unscented cases: i) using machine learning (ML) methods utilizing extracted features; ii) using deep learning (DL) methods utilizing relative sub-band power topographic heat map images. Experimental results suggest that the olfactory stimulus can be successfully detected with up to 92% accuracy by the proposed method. Furthermore, it is shown that topographic heat maps can accurately depict the response of the brain to olfactory stimuli.
Cite this article as: B. Akbugday, S. Pehlivan Akbugday, R. Sadikzade, A. Akan and S. Unal, "Detection of olfactory stimulus in electroencephalogram signals using machine and deep learning methods," Electrica, 24(1), 175-182, 2024.