On yesterday’s Diane Rehm show, guest host Susan Page talked to Rachel Herz, author of The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell:
The first and definitive book on the psychology of smell, The Scent of Desire traces the importance of smell in our lives, from nourishment to procreation…
Common physical symptoms such as fatigue, chest pain and lower back pain are related to the perception of everyday smells, University of Nottingham researchers will tell delegates at a health psychology conference on campus.
The researchers investigated how stress, intense odours and personality combined to explain everyday physical symptoms that appear to have no medical basis — such as abdominal pain, fatigue, chest pain and lower back pain.
— Just as you suspected, bad perfumes make you sick. Read the rest in Science Daily.
When it comes to a man's body odour, the fragrance -- or stench -- is in the nose of the beholder, according to U.S. researchers who suggest a single gene may determine how people perceive body odour.
The study, published online on Sunday in the journal Nature, helps explain why the same sweaty man can smell like vanilla to some, like urine to others and for about a third of adults, have no smell at all.
— And as you also suspected, what smells good to you might not smell good to others. Read more in Stinky? It's not his sweat, it's your nose (link no longer working, sorry!) at Yahoo. Thanks to Ruth for both of these links!
The luscious aroma of flowers attracts lovers, and the biological role of that smell is similar: to attract pollinators. “Plants need to attract insects, bats and hummingbirds to transfer the pollen and create fertile seeds,” says Hugh Iltis, professor emeritus of botany at UW-Madison.
— From Curiosities: Why Do Flowers Smell, And Why Do Plants Smell, Too?, in Science Daily, with thanks to Ruth for the link and post title!
Scientists studying how sleep affects memory have found that the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering brain better remember things that it learned the evening before. The smell of roses — delivered to people’s nostrils as they studied and, later, as they slept — improved their performance on a memory test by about 13 percent.
— Another reason to spritz on some Une Rose before you go to bed, from the journal Science via today's New York Times (with thanks to Ruth for the link).
“The Quest to Bottle Happiness” in today’s Orlando Sentinel details recent research into how we react emotionally to different smells:
For years, sensory scientists had assumed that our reactions to smell were hopelessly entwined with our cultural background. “When I came to the United Kingdom, I was shocked that the smell of chrysanthemums evokes romantic feelings in people here,” says Phillipe Durand, a perfumer at fragrance development company Quest International in Ashford, Kent, England. “In France, we associate it with graves and death.”
However, there is mounting evidence from brain scans that our responses to some smells, particularly bad ones, are innate…