Temporal processing reveals a mechanism for limiting the capacity of humans to analyze odor mixtures.

Humans have great difficulty in analyzing odor mixtures. The present study investigates the role of temporal processing in mixture perception and its impact on human performance. The results indicate that in contrast to binary mixtures, the temporal order of the perception of components and their identity cannot be discerned in ternary mixtures. It is proposed that the primary cause of this inability is slow processing in olfactory working memory which limits the analysis of mixtures to about three components.