Smell the fat

Posted by Robin on 23 January 2014 6 Comments

Previous research has suggested that we may be able to "taste" fat. And now, researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center have found evidence that we might be able to smell it, too. "The human sense of smell is far better at guiding us through our everyday lives than we give it credit for," study researcher Johan Lundström, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist at Monell, said in a statement. "That we have the ability to detect and discriminate minute differences in the fat content of our food suggests that this ability must have had considerable evolutionary importance."

— Read more at It's Possible To Smell The Fat In Food at the Huffington Post.

Simply fewer smells

Posted by Robin on 15 January 2014 Leave a Comment

One reason is that odor molecules move much more slowly as the air temperature drops, said Pamela Dalton, an olfactory scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. That means that there are simply fewer smells to smell on a cold, crisp day than there are on a hot and humid one.

— Read more at Why Cold Air Smells Different at Discovery.

A woman obsessed with smell

Posted by Robin on 8 January 2014 2 Comments

She is a woman obsessed with smell. As head of a sensory ecology lab, she's spent the past two decades picking apart how seabirds' ability to detect scents is key to their survival. Nevitt had the good fortune to arrive in the field on the heels of a handful of pioneering bird olfaction studies. Yet changing long-held beliefs takes time, and the scientific community is no exception. Dozens of Nevitt's grant proposals have been rejected because of the birds-can't-smell fallacy. A program officer once called to say her application was the worst he'd ever seen. "Your idea that birds can smell is ridiculous,"he said. "This will never be funded, so stop wasting your time."

— Read more at Birds Can Smell, and One Scientist is Leading the Charge to Prove It, an article at Audubon magazine about Gabrielle Nevitt of the University of California-Davis.

Lungs have odor receptors

Posted by Robin on 3 January 2014 2 Comments

Like the nose, lungs have odor receptors. But instead of sending nerve impulses to the brain that conjure up a burning cigarette or a cup of coffee, these receptors send a signal that may make you cough. Unlike the receptors in your nose, which are located in the membranes of nerve cells, the ones in the lungs are in the membranes of the flask-shaped neuroendocrine cells that at times are triggered to dump hormones that make airways constrict.

— Futurity, reporting on new research from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Iowa. Read more at Odor 'Guards' in Lungs Can Make Us Cough.

Sniff out danger

Posted by Robin on 13 December 2013 2 Comments

Most people – including scientists – assumed we can't just sniff out danger. It was thought that we become afraid of an odor – such as leaking gas – only after information about a scary scent is processed by our brain. But neuroscientists at Rutgers University studying the olfactory – sense of smell – system in mice have discovered that this fear reaction can occur at the sensory level, even before the brain has the opportunity to interpret that the odor could mean trouble.

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Now Smell This

a blog about perfume

Smell the fat

Simply fewer smells

A woman obsessed with smell

Lungs have odor receptors

Sniff out danger