Lai-quan Zou

• Ph.D
• Professor (Associate) at School of Public Health, Southern Medical University

Purpose The aim of this study is to develop an intraoperative olfactory monitoring system using olfactory evoked potential produced by electrical stimulation. Furthermore, the study seeks to ascertain the feasibility and safety of olfactory evoked potential. This study lays the groundwork for safeguarding olfactory function during surgical procedur...

Purpose: Children and adolescents with an insecure dietary pattern are at risk of experiencing adverse health effects. In general, olfactory capacity is particularly important in shaping food-flavor perception, affecting nutritious food intake, and ultimately influencing eating behaviors such as food selection, appetite, and consumption. Therefore,...

Olfaction, often regarded as a unique chemical sensation, plays a pivotal role in shaping our quality of life and mental well‐being. Numerous studies have highlighted the significant relationship between olfactory function and depressive symptoms. However, the complex mechanisms underlying how olfactory function affects the development of depressiv...

Previous research has revealed that the insula, pallidum, thalamus, hippocampus, middle frontal gyrus, and supplementary motor area are activated during odor memory and that the performance of olfactory working memory is affected by the verbalization of odors. However, the neural mechanisms underlying olfactory working memory and the role of verbal...

The underlying mechanisms of the interconnections among neuroticism, self-efficacy, and perceived stress in younger and older adults are rarely studied simultaneously. Two hundred fourteen participants (128 younger adults aged 18–34 years and 86 older adults aged 60–89 years) were assessed using scales for neuroticism, self-efficacy, and perceived...

Early detection and prevention of internalizing problems demand a thorough exploration of latent vulnerabilities before clinical symptoms emerge. Limited research attention has been paid to the influence of olfactory perception, a flexible factor intricately linked to emotional processing and external environmental factors. This study sought to exa...

The Social Odor Scale (SOS) is a 12-item questionnaire initially developed and validated in Italian and German to investigate self-reported awareness of social odors, which are odors emanating from the human body that convey diverse information and evoke various emotional responses. The scale includes a total score and three subscales representing...

Olfaction and emotion are closely related, but their relationship with the field of aesthetics is often overlooked. This article finalizes a line of studies conducted to develop the Perfume-related Olfactory Aesthetic Experience Scale (POLAES). The current research includes three studies (n = 677). In Study 1, 493 participants assessed a list of it...

In recent years, metaphors have been used to understand how abstract concepts are processed, and developing metaphorical database can aid this research agenda. Accordingly, the present study aimed to produce a broad Chinese olfactory and gustatory database of metaphors. Expressions for two sensory types (olfaction/gustation) were compiled and class...

Human sexuality and mating behaviors have been linked to the subjective importance of olfaction and body odor in one's life; however, the relationship among these factors has not been fully explored. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relationships between sociosexual orientation, subjective importance of olfaction, and body odor sniffi...

The Revised Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-R) is a measurement tool for assessing an individual’s willingness to engage in uncommitted sexual relations. Despite its widespread use in various contexts, no studies have validated the use of this instrument in China. Therefore, the current study aimed to assess the reliability and validity of a...

The Children's Personal Significance of Olfaction Questionnaire (ChiPSO) is a measurement tool for assessing the importance of olfactory information in children. Due to limited research on the importance of olfaction in Chinese children, this study aims to translate the ChiPSO into Chinese and validate this version, thereby examining its applicabil...

Indole is often associated with a sweet and f loral odor typical of jasmine f lowers at low concentrations and an unpleasant, animal-like odor at high concentrations. However, the mechanism whereby the brain processes this opposite valence of indole is not fully understood yet. In this study, we aimed to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying...

Background Noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques are a promising tool for treating the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Growing evidence suggests that different dimensions of negative symptoms have partly distinct underlying pathophysiological mechanisms. Previous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have shown inconsistent impacts of N...

The Social Odor Scale (SOS) is a 12-item questionnaire initially developed and validated in Italian and German to investigate awareness of social odors, which are odors emanating from the human body that convey diverse information and evoke various emotional responses. The scale includes a total score and three subscales representing social odors i...

Long-COVID mercilessly brought awareness to what olfaction researchers have known all along; losing your sense of smell changes your experiences with the world around you and can compromise your health and wellbeing [...]

Chemosensory disorders (including smell, taste and chemesthesis) are among the established symptoms of COVID-19 infection; however, new data indicate that the changes in chemosensory sensation caused by COVID-19 may differ among populations and COVID-19 variants. To date, few studies have focused on the influence of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant o...

The comprehension of metaphor, a vivid and figurative language, is a complex endeavor requiring cooperation among multiple cognitive systems. There are still many important questions regarding neural mechanisms implicated in specific types of metaphor. To address these questions, we conducted activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses on 30 stu...

The sense of smell is essential in daily life. Children with olfactory dysfunction face a series of problems, so assessing olfactory function during early‐life period is very important. The Universal Sniff (U‐Sniff) test is a widely used measurement of odor identification ability in children and adolescents, although there is a lack of normative da...

Background Odor memory is an important field of clinical research for its distinctive characteristics, which differ from those of other sensory systems. To date, several tests have been implemented for the assessment of odor memory. Despite a range of studies demonstrating the importance of verbal mediation in odor memory, few have distinguished od...

Olfactory sensations contribute to sexual desire and sexual behavior. However, the degree to which individual importance of olfactory function and body odors relate to sexual desire is not known. This study was conducted to preliminarily examine these relationships among Chinese college students (N = 1903) via the Importance of Olfaction Questionna...

Objectives Body odor can convey much information about an individual and thus we frequently engage in sniffing one's own and other people's body odor. However, there is scarce evidence on the within- and cross-cultural variation in body odor sniffing behaviors and no psychometric scale for specifically measuring such behaviors. Hence, our study aim...

Objectives: Dreams often involve visual and auditory sensations, but olfactory experiences have not received the same amount of attention. This study explores the prevalence and content of olfactory dreams in China and investigates the relationship between olfactory imagery, olfactory significance, and olfactory dreamers. Methods: In the first part...

Background: Previous studies have investigated the relationship between schizotypal traits and odor identification ability as well as the relationship between schizotypal traits and odor hedonic capacity in adults. However, very little is known about the relationship among these three factors, especially in children and adolescents. The current stu...

Atypical olfactory function in autism spectrum disorder has been documented in numerous studies, but little is known about its occurrence in individuals with autistic traits. The aim of the current study was to investigate odor identification ability and olfactory hedonic capacity in children with autistic traits. We recruited 415 children and meas...

Food neophobia, the reluctance to try novel food, is associated with numerous personality traits. Schizotypy, a subclinical phenotype of schizophrenia, consists of reduced severity of symptoms or traits of schizophrenia, which have been shown to consume a poor diet. However, there is no study directly examining the relationship between food neophob...

Background: The aim of this study was to determine the reliability and validity of the brief version of Questionnaire of Olfactory Disorders (brief QOD). Methods: A total of 372 patients participated in this study. Olfactory function was examined using the Sniffin’ Sticks test. The brief version of QOD, including 4 items concerning parosmia (QOD-P)...

Children with autistic traits in clinical or non-clinical populations are vulnerable to chemosensory anhedonia and unusual eating behaviors. However, few studies have explored the relationship between the three. Thus, in the current study, we first validated the Chemosensory Pleasure Scale for kids (CPS-K) from a population of preschool children an...

嗅觉是人类重要的感觉功能之一。嗅觉功能障碍对人们的生活质量及精神健康影响巨大，尽管目前关于嗅觉功能障碍的治疗手段较多，但其疗效仍欠佳。嗅觉训练作为嗅觉功能障碍的主要治疗方法之一，具有简单易行的特点，同时依据嗅觉系统的神经可塑性作为理论基础，被证实在多种原因所致的嗅觉功能障碍的患者中具有一定疗效。嗅觉训练发展至今，传统的训练方法不断被改进、创新。为进一步了解嗅觉训练及其临床应用价值，本文就嗅觉训练的脑机制、嗅觉训练方法及训练效果进行综述。

Background: The diagnosis of olfactory dysfunction is challenging given the negligence during routine physical examination, inconvenience of diagnosis in clinical practice, and the inattention to cross-cultural adaptability. The study aimed to develop and validate a simple and effective self-reported olfactory dysfunction questionnaire (SODQ) for...

Objective: Olfactory deficits have been reported in bipolar disorder (BD), but this finding is controversial. This study investigated whether olfactory deficit can serve as a specific marker for BD by comparing olfactory function in different mood episodes of BD. We also compared olfactory function in BD and other mental disorders—namely, major dep...

Background: Early-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder (EOCD) is a comparatively severe subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Olfactory dysfunction is a common symptom of OCD, but all previous studies have focused on late-onset OCD (LOCD). Methods: The current study compared olfactory identification ability in EOCD patients and age-matched...

Chemosensory anhedonia, a decreased ability to experience pleasant smells and tastes, is a key clinical feature of many neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. The Chemosensory Pleasure Scale (CPS) was designed to assess the hedonic capacity to enjoy smells and tastes. However, the CPS for children remains underdeveloped. This study was...

Olfactory impairment and rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) are prodromal symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD) that may be associated with each other. This review aims to investigate the significance of olfaction in the diagnosis and prognosis of patients with RBD and to assess moderating factors affecting olfactory performance. We s...

Background: This cross-sectional, multi-centric study aimed to investigate the differences in quality of life among patients with olfactory dysfunction (OD) of different origin, and to identify factors associated with olfactory-related quality of life (QOL). Methods: Seven hundred sixty-three adults were recruited from 8 Smell & Taste clinics in...

Background “Early-onset schizophrenia” (EOS) is defined as disease with onset before the age of 18 years. This subset of schizophrenia exhibits worse cognitive function and carries a worse prognosis than adult-onset schizophrenia (AOS). Olfactory impairment has been found in patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. However, most research has...

嗅觉是人体的基本感觉之一，在人类生命活动中起着非常重要的作用。儿童嗅觉功能 障碍与食欲、学习、情绪和免疫等因素密切相关，严重影响其身心健康。较成人而言，儿童群体的嗅觉 功能障碍往往被忽视，相关研究较缺乏。儿童常常不能主动或准确描述症状，因此加强对儿童嗅觉功 能的检测具有重要意义。本文通过对现有儿童嗅觉心理物理测试方法及其临床应用情况进行综述， 旨在为临床上儿童嗅觉功能测试方法的选择及相关研究提供参考。

Anhedonia, the loss or decline of the ability to enjoy pleasure, is an important clinical characteristic of schizophrenia. Schizotypal traits refer to the appearance of subclinical symptoms of schizophrenia across normal people. Still, few studies have investigated chemosensory anhedonia in schizophrenia patients and schizotypy individuals. Seventy...

Researchers have examined if olfaction is a sensitive biomarker of anorexia nervosa, but considerable heterogeneity across studies makes it difficult to reach a consensus. This review and meta-analysis sought to clarify if olfaction is altered in individuals with anorexia nervosa and explore potential moderators of olfaction in this population. We...

A body of research has investigated the relationship between alexithymia and sleep problems, as well as the relationship between schizophrenia and alexithymia. However, there have been few studies on the relationships between the three. The current study explored the relationship between schizotypal traits and sleep problems among college students,...

Background: To extend the previous study by Schriever and colleagues from 2018 providing normative data and re-investigating the reliability for U-Sniff test in children in additional countries. Methodology: A total of 388 children (196 boys, 192 girls) from eight countries (China, Germany, Iran, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Paraguay, and Russia)...

Specific anosmia is defined as the inability to detect a particular odorant, despite a normal olfactory function. Previous studies reported sex-related difference in detection threshold to steroid odorants, like androstenone or androstadienone during adolescence, and boys showed an increased detection threshold with age. However, such investigation...

Food neophobia, as a continuous personality trait, usually manifests in unwillingness to try, or even fear of trying unfamiliar food. The Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) is a measure designed to assess food neophobia. However, few studies have applied the FNS in a Chinese context. Therefore, this work aims to formulate and analyze a Chinese version of t...

Objectives: Olfactory dysfunction is a common problem. However, too little attention has been paid to questionnaires used to evaluate quantitative olfactory dysfunction. Therefore, the current study aimed to develop a simple self-reported Mini Olfactory Questionnaire (Self-MOQ) for the screening of quantitative olfactory dysfunction in clinical pr...

Anhedonia, or the inability to experience pleasure, is a key clinical feature of many mental disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. Although various valid measurements of anhedonia and pleasure experience exist, no scales exist that quantify smell and taste pleasure experiences. The Chemosensory Pleasure Scale (CPS) was therefore designed...

Olfactory identification (OI) deficits have been regarded as an indicator of cognitive impairment in the elderly, but few studies have analyzed the mixed effect of depression on OI. Since depression is common in the elderly and strongly associated with OI, we aimed to explore whether the comorbidity of depression and cognitive impairment may be ass...

Previous studies have provided compelling support for the olfactory dysfunction and emotion deficits in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The present research aimed to study whether olfactory function is associated with emotional states and emotional expression in individuals with schizotypy. Thirty individuals with schizotypy and 30 controls were...

Social pain is a painful experience caused by negative events, such as relationship broken, undervaluation, and social rejection. In this review, we summarized the neurophysiological mechanisms of social pain from perspectives of neuroimaging, neuroendocrine and neuroimmunology. Future studies are warranted to further determine the relationship bet...

The current study was to examine the relationship among depressive symptoms, post-traumatic stress symptoms, emotion regulatory self-efficacy and suicide risk. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 3257 graduate students from a medical college of China. Lifetime prevalence of suicidal ideation, plan and attempt were 25.7%, 1.6%, 1.1%, respec...

Clinical and neuroimaging data support the idea that schizo-obsessive comorbidity (SOC), similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia (SCZ), may be a distinct brain disorder. In this study, we examined the strength of resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between 19 subregions of the default mode network (DMN) and whole b...

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a complex and severe psychiatric disorder whose pathogenesis is not fully understood. Recent studies have shown white matter (WM) alterations in adults with OCD, but the results have been inconsistent. The present study investigated WM structure in OCD patients with the hypothesis that large-scale brain networ...

Anhedonia is a core feature of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and is less responsive to antipsychotic medication. Little is known whether anhedonia could be alleviated by cognitive training. The present study aimed to examine whether hedonic deficits observed in individuals with high social anhedonia could be reduced by working memory (WM)...

Objective: Pleasure is essential to normal healthy life. Olfaction, as 1 of the neurobehavioral probes of hedonic capacity, has a unique advantage compared to other sensory modalities. However, it is unclear how olfactory hedonic information is processed in the brain. This study aimed to investigate olfactory hedonic processing in the human brain....

Olfaction is an important medium of social communication in humans. However, it is not known whether olfactory function is associated with social network size. This study aimed to explore the underlying neural mechanism between olfactory function and social network. Thirty-one healthy individuals participated in this study. Social network size was...

The gap between the demand and delivery of mental health services in mainland China can be reduced by validating freely available and psychometrically sound psychological instruments. The present research examined the Chinese version of the 21-item Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21). Study 1 administered the DASS-21 to 1,815 Chinese college...

Dysregulation of the striatum and altered corticostriatal connectivity have been associated with psychotic disorders. Social anhedonia has been identified as a predictor for the development of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The aim of the present study was to examine corticostriatal functional connectivity in individuals with high social anhedon...

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to carry out intended actions after a delay. PM impairments are common in schizophrenia patients and are thought to be related to their prefrontal cortex dysfunction; however, this has not yet been examined directly in the research literature. The current study aimed to examine abnormalities...

Patients with schizophrenia are known to have impairments in sensory processing. In order to understand the specific temporal perception deficits of schizophrenia, we investigated and determined to what extent impairments in temporal integration can be dissociated from attention deployment using Attentional Blink (AB). Our findings showed that ther...

Very few studies have examined physical and social anhedonia across the spectrum of schizophrenia. In the present study, we recruited three groups of participants (n=84 in each group): patients with schizophrenia, schizotypy and non-schizotypy as assessed by the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). All participants completed the self-report...