Posted by Robin on 10 Comments
Women may be better at sniffing out biologically relevant information from underarm sweat, a US study suggests.
Researchers found it was difficult to mask underarm odour when a woman was doing the smelling, but quite easy to do so when it was a man.
— From Women pick up body odour better at BBC News.
Posted by Robin on 24 Comments
Avery Gilbert, author of What The Nose Knows, will be holding a talk called “The Seduction of Scent” on Saturday, April 18 at 7 pm at the University of Minnesota Bell Museum of Natural History in Minneapolis.
Avery will speak on the critical role smell plays in our lives, how the sense of smell is able to tempt and repel us and how it makes us part of the chemical conversation between plants and pollinators, herbivores and predators…
Posted by Robin on 4 Comments
Although a flower's odor can be composed of hundreds of chemicals, a moth uses just a handful to recognize the flower.
It's like identifying a piece of music from hearing only the notes played by a few key instruments, said lead researcher Jeffrey A. Riffell.
[...] The finding provides insight into how the brain processes a specific smell from the sea of odors floating through the air.
— From How Moths Key Into Scent Of A Flower, about research conducted at the University of Arizona, at ScienceDaily.
Posted by Robin on 7 Comments
In a recent experiment, researchers tested hundreds of receptor gene types found in human and mouse noses.
By inundating the receptors with odors, researchers were able to figure out which receptors respond to which odor molecules and translate the smells into brain signals.
Unlocking this interface would show how the brain recognizes and reacts to different smells.
— Read more at Scent Secrets Unlocked, Artificial Noses Ahead? at the National Geographic.
Posted by Robin on 18 Comments
A woman may not consciously think of a man's sweat during intimate moments. But her brain appears to recognize the scent and the significance of the emotions it conveys right away.
That's the conclusion of a Rice University study that exposed 19 twentysomething women to various scents, including "normal" sweat from males as well as so-called "sexual" sweat — more on this in a moment.
— From Unique male sweat has sexual message at The Houston Chronicle. See also: When you're in love, everything smells different.