"Critically, across cultures, the perceived relative pleasantness of odorants seems to be equally robust—our effects are not driven by the peculiarities of one or two odorants or limited by the sample size of participants. This is striking and is contrary to what would have been predicted from a cultural relativity perspective,” the authors wrote.

— Researchers look at the influence of culture on odor preference. Read more in What’s Your Favorite Smell? at Psychology Today.

It wasn't that our extinct relatives could smell scents undetectable to humans, or vice versa. Instead, the Denisovan turned out to have a more sensitive nose than humans, while Neanderthals seemed to have weaker noses — especially, in one group, for stinky body odors.

— Read more in Some Neanderthals couldn't smell their own stink, suggests a new study recreating early humans' noses at Business Insider.

Building on the idea that metaphors we use in language can influence our social cognition (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), Spike Lee had been busy exposing participants to fishy smells (made from a mixture of anchovy and sardine concentrates). What he wanted to test was whether these literally fishy smells would make people more suspicious of others.

In several studies, he found just that.

— Read more in What’s That Smell? The Psychology of Scent at Psychology Today.

The researchers found that for every one-point increase in both olfactory identification and sensitivity scores, there was a significant and meaningful reduction in frailty status. The study can't prove cause and effect, but the implication is that improvements in smell were associated with improved health status and resilience, the study authors noted.

— Read more in Loss of smell associated with frailty in older adults at UPI.

Our sense of smell is clearly a complex process; it involves hundreds of different odorant receptors working in concert. The more an odor stimulates a particular neuron, the more electrical signals that neuron sends to the brain. But researchers at UC Santa Barbara discovered that these neurons actually fall silent when an odor rises above a certain threshold. Remarkably, this was integral to how the brain recognized each smell. "It's a feature; it's not a bug," said Matthieu Louis, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology [at University of California - Santa Barbara].

— Read more in Researchers reveal an added layer of nuance in our sense of smell at ScienceDaily.