Dynamics of Nasal Chemesthesis

Dynamics, or how stimulation occurs over time, influences the somatosensory impact of volatile chemicals. Within an experimental session, sensation waxes with steady presentation over seconds to minutes, may reach a plateau, and then may fade. Long-term occupational exposure can desensitize the trigeminal system. Short- and long-term dynamics might be mediated by different mechanisms. For brief intranasal exposures (i.e., up to about 10 seconds), studies have systematically manipulated both time (duration of exposure) and concentration to maintain a fixed perceived intensity or a fixed level of detection. A simple mass integration model describes the trade-off between concentration and time quite well: a fixed-ratio increase in duration compensates for a fixed-ratio decrease in concentration. However, for most compounds, more than a two-fold increase in duration are required to compensate for cutting concentration in half. For example, for ethanol, an increase in duration of about six-fold are required. For such compounds that display highly imperfect integration, a fixed number of molecules might have a much greater sensory impact when presented over 0.2 seconds than over 0.5 seconds. Nasal chemesthesis may be temporally sluggish compared to olfaction, but fine-grained dynamics still matter. Time-intensity ratings of nasal irritation from dynamic stimuli also support this conclusion. Although integration is generally imperfect, compounds vary widely in how far they fall short of perfect time-concentration trading. Current studies use a structure-activity approach to determine how molecular parameters correlate with how well a compound integrates over time.