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Aversive outcomes impact human olfactory discrimination learning and generalization.

Learning associations between sensory stimuli and outcomes, and generalizing these associations to novel stimuli, are a fundamental feature of adaptive behavior. Given a noisy olfactory world, stimulus generalization holds unique relevance for the olfactory system. Recent studies suggest that aversive outcomes induce wider generalization curves by modulating discrimination thresholds, but evidence for similar processes in olfaction does not exist. Here, we use a novel olfactory discrimination learning paradigm to address the question of how outcome valence impacts associative learning and generalization in humans. Subjects underwent discrimination learning, where they learned to associate odor mixtures with either aversive (shock) or neutral (air puff) outcomes. We find better olfactory learning for odors associated with aversive compared to neutral outcomes. We further show that generalization gradients are also modulated by outcome valence, with the shock group exhibiting a steeper gradient. Computational modeling revealed that differences in generalization are driven by a narrower excitatory gradient in the shock group, indicating more discriminatory responses. These findings provide novel evidence that olfactory learning and generalization are strongly affected by the valence of outcomes. This adaptive mechanism allows for behavioral flexibility in novel situations with related stimuli and with outcomes of different valences. Because odor stimuli differ considerably from one encounter to the next, adaptive generalization may be especially important in the olfactory system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).