Your nose may be more powerful than you think. <\/p>\n
In a single sniff, the human sense of smell can distinguish odors within a fraction of a second, working at a level of sensitivity that is \u201con par\u201d with how our brains perceive color, \u201crefuting the widely held belief that olfaction is our slow sense,\u201d a new study finds. <\/p>\n
Humans also can discern between various sequences of odors \u2013 distinguishing a sequence of \u201cA\u201d before \u201cB\u201d from sequence \u201cB\u201d before \u201cA\u201d \u2013 when the interval between odorant A and odorant B is merely 60 milliseconds, according to the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were astonished to observe that participants could distinguish between two odorants presented in one order and the reverse when the latency between the odorants was as short as 60 milliseconds,\u201d Dr. Wen Zhou, lead author of the study and a principal investigator at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said in an email. Latency refers to the time between when each scent is delivered. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor comparison, the duration of an eye blink is about 180 milliseconds,\u201d Zhou added. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur apparatus could be used for therapeutic purposes, such as olfactory training for patients with olfactory loss,\u201d Zhou said. \u201cMore broadly, our findings could guide the design and development of electronic noses and olfactory virtual reality systems, which could have significant clinical benefits.\u201d <\/p>\n
The researchers, from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ohio State University, developed a sniff-triggered apparatus that included check valves \u2013 devices that allow odor to flow in one direction \u2013 and Teflon tubes, capable of delivering odors to the human nose with a precision of 18 milliseconds. The researchers asked 229 adults in China to wear this device and smell different odor mixtures: two odors presented in quick succession within a single sniff. <\/p>\n
The odors included apple-like scents, sweet floral scents, lemon-like scents and onion-like scents. The latency between the two odors was carefully manipulated. <\/p>\n
The researchers analyzed whether participants could distinguish between two odors presented in one order and the reverse at different latencies. <\/p>\n
They found that, overall, two odors presented in one order and the reverse became \u201cperceptually discriminable\u201d when the two odors were only 60 milliseconds apart within a single sniff, Zhou said. <\/p>\n
The researchers noted that they used only four odorants and that it would be beneficial to test a wider variety to determine whether the human sense of smell is more sensitive to certain odor dynamics or compounds. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis could provide a deeper understanding of the computational principles underlying our olfactory experience,\u201d Zhou said. <\/p>\n
The new findings challenge previous research in which the timing it took to discriminate between odor sequences was around 1,200 milliseconds, Dr. Dmitry Rinberg, a professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Langone Health in New York, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Nature Human Behaviour. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe timing of individual notes in music is essential for conveying meaning and beauty in a melody, and the human ear is very sensitive to this. However, temporal sensitivity is not limited to hearing: our sense of smell can also perceive small temporal changes in odour presentations,\u201d he wrote. \u201cSimilar to how timing affects the perception of notes in a melody, the timing of individual components in a complex odour mixture that reaches the nose may be crucial for our perception of the olfactory world.\u201d <\/p>\n
The ability to tell apart odors within a single sniff might be an important way in which animals detect both what a smell is and where it might be in space, said Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta, a professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the new study. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe demonstration that humans can tell apart smells as they change within a sniff is a powerful demonstration that timing is important for smell across species, and therefore is a general principle underlying olfactory function. In addition, this study sheds important light on the mysterious mechanisms that support human odor perception,\u201d Datta wrote in an email. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe study of human olfaction has historically lagged that of vision and hearing, because as humans we think of ourselves as visual creatures that largely use speech to communicate,\u201d he said, adding that the new study helps \u201cfill a critical gap in our understanding of how we as humans smell.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Your nose may be more powerful than you think. In a single sniff, the human sense of smell can distinguish odors within a fraction of a second, working at a level of sensitivity that is \u201con par\u201d with how our brains perceive color, \u201crefuting the widely held belief that olfaction is our slow sense,\u201d a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":653,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}