The fascination with Joy [Milne] is of course attributable to the fact that she can smell the way she can, but it is heightened by the fact that no one knows why. She is hyperosmic by any reasonable definition, but hyperosmia has been the object of so little serious scientific investigation — the smell taboo in action, no doubt, at least in part — that it lacks even a set of agreed-upon definitional criteria.

— Read more in The Woman Who Could Smell Parkinson’s at The New York Times.

In a fascinating 2020 study, researchers in Reykjavik delved into the olfactory abilities of more than 11,000 Icelanders. They discovered a genetic quirk that alters one’s perception of fishy scents. While this rare mutation affects only about 2 percent of Icelanders, it’s practically unheard of in African countries (0.2 percent) and is scantily present in other parts of Europe (0.8 percent). To those born with the genetic mutation, the fish smells transform into something more akin to a bouquet of roses.

— Read more in Been There, Smelled That: Can You Smell What I Smell In Iceland? at McSweeney’s.

Researchers have discovered that giving names to odors not only affects our perception of them but how they are processed in our primary olfactory cortex, the area of our brains related to our sense of smell.

Participants were given minty and citrusy odors to sniff, which had been labeled with two words; for example, mint-menthol or eucalyptus-menthol. While sniffing, participants were scanned using an ultrahigh-field (7-tesla) functional MRI (fMRI) machine.

— Read more in Naming Scents: How Labels Shape Our Perception of Odors at Neuroscience News.