Posts Tagged Odor Perception

MIT scientists one step closer to artificial nose

MIT researchers report they’ve finally mass produced olfactory receptor proteins — molecules that can smell. Many researchers across the world have been working on e-noses, but the MIT research is based in the biology of the human nose. Previous efforts to make large numbers of artificial receptors have failed because the protein’s structure breaks down when it’s removed from the mucus membrane. The MIT team developed a protective detergent solution that allowed mass production of the molecules. Possible applications for artificial nose technology include sniffing for disease, environmental pollutants, and bacteria.

Read more in BBC


Add comment October 2, 2008

Electronic noses benefit from polymer-based mucus

British electronic-nose developers have found that adding a mucus layer to their e-nose improves its sniffing ability. Just like the mucus in a human nose, the synthetic mucus used on the e-nose controls the sniffing rate, thereby improving precision and accuracy, as well as length of time required for odor analysis. Some aroma identification that had been challenging for the pre-mucus e-nose, such as distinguishing milk from cream, is now being done with ease. The research team, from the University of Warwick and Leicester University, thinks the mucus-enhanced e-nose could be on sale sometime in 2009. The team is looking into health-care diagnostic uses, including for eye infections, skin diseases and urinary infections.

Read more at Bionic Nose and BBC News


Add comment September 9, 2008

Testing developed for measuring kids’ ability to smell

Until recently, there were no good tests available for measuring the ability to smell in children. Available studies were too lengthy for kids, and measured response to odors that kids hadn’t necessarily been exposed to, even if they could smell them. A new study has changed all that. Australian scientists found 16 different odors that most kids ages 5-7 can identify. The 16 odors represent 4 sections of the palate: salty, bitter, sour, and sweet. (There was no mention in the study of the fifth category umami, the savory taste for which receptors are available everywhere on the tongue.) The 16 odors represented include floral, orange, strawberry, fish, chocolate, baby powder, paint, cut grass, sour, minty, onion, Vicks Vapo-rub, spicy, antiseptic, cheese, and gasoline. Because of the study, several standard smell and taste tests are now able to diagnose the level of smell and taste function in young children.

Read more in Medical News Today


Add comment August 16, 2008

Birth control pills affect scent-based attraction

A recent UK study found that birth control pills impact a woman’s likelihood of sniffing out a genetically compatible mate. While it’s considered best, genetically and reproductively speaking, to choose a mate whose scent (determined by genes) is different, women in the study preferred men whose scent was similar to their own. The researchers who performed the study have some interesting theories about possible problems that could result, including fertility problems and breakups after the woman goes off the pill due to the resulting loss of scent-based attraction. The pill is apparently mirroring a function that happens when women are pregnant or no longer of mating age. Given that women usually take the pill because they don’t want children, it sounds like the pill is doing its job.

Read more at MSNBC


Add comment August 15, 2008

Study looks at effects of “olfactory imagery”

Imagine a scent you’re familiar with. Now, actually go find something with that scent and sniff it. Chances are, imagining the scent caused the same reaction in your respiratory system as actually sniffing it did. This is the result of a recent study by German scientists, published in the journal Chemical Senses. They’re calling what happens in our minds when we imagine a scent “olfactory imagery.” Fifty-six people with normal olfactory function were asked, alternately, to imagine or sniff four different odors, all odors considered pleasant by most (coffee, rose, lemon and banana). A significant increase in respiratory volume and amplitude were detected with both activities, and the increase was the same. The researchers concluded that the same mechanism is operating in the respiratory system with olfactory imagery that operates with sniffing.

Read the full study in Chemical Senses Journal.


Add comment August 13, 2008

Electric shock improves odor perception

It sure seems like we’re discovering an exponential number of fascinating new things about the olfactory system these days. An article that came out of the recent Symposium on Olfaction and Taste has been forwarded to me at least a dozen times already, because it’s so filled with interesting true tales and cliff bits. Check out the studies presented by Dr. Jay Gottfried. In one, humans exposed to just one floral odor for about three minutes markedly improved their abilities to tell families of flower odors apart from one another. Then there’s the one where the people learned to discern “undetectable” differences between an herbal smell and its mirror-image molecular twin. How’d they do that? Electric shock as punishment for the wrong answer! Makes me wish I’d gone to that symposium.

Read more in the New York Times


Add comment August 8, 2008

Olfactory mapping technique created by Israeli scientists

If odors were on a map, the way colors are “mapped” on a rainbow, which scents would be where? Israeli scientists have created an olfactory map based on analysis of 450 different scents. The map uses a 32-dimensional mathematical model, and 40 defining characteristics fo reach scent. In the study, written about recently in Nature Methods, the map was successfully used to predict the neural activity caused by sniffing a particular odor. Researchers were also able to predict the map location of a previously untested odor based on the neural response to sniffing it. For example, neural response to roses is similar to neural response to almonds, and lo and behold, these odors are neighbors on the odor map.

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Add comment August 6, 2008

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Scent is being used in amazing and creative new ways, in marketing, art, health, business, and life. Scientists are making new discoveries all the time about how we smell and what functions smell has in our lives.

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