![]() People who lose their sense of smell feel like they are behind a glass wall. By Ben Jhoty “Close your eyes,” says Jocelyn Fullerton, founder of boutique Sydney perfumery Cult of Scent. I’m in Fullerton’s fragrance studio in her cosy bungalow in Sydney’s Lilyfield. A warm and expressive woman with bright eyes framed by heavy, chic-looking glasses, Fullerton has opened what looks like a two-litre flask containing a scent that’s just beyond my grasp. I close my eyes and breathe in. “What colour is it?” asks Fullerton. “I don’t know, light blue?” I venture. I have an image of a bathroom in a house I used to live in by the sea. “I feel like I might have bathed in it,” I say. I open my eyes. “It’s a lavender extract,” says Fullerton. The moment she says it, the smell clicks into place in my mind. I was so close.
0 Comments
![]() Someone working in a kitchen without a sense of smell is like a blind person driving a taxi. By Ben Jhoty Broadly speaking your sense of smell has three main functions. To avoid harm, by smelling fire or recognizing food that’s off, to aid social communication and to help with the ingestion of food and drink. But while there are biological imperatives, olfaction’s role extends beyond survival, says Dr Mehmet Mahmut, a senior lecturer in psychology at Macquarie University’s Food, Flavour & Fragrance Lab. “It’s important to be aware of the impact that your smell may have on your behaviour, on your decisions and the consequences of that behaviour.” It’s crucial to our enjoyment and appreciation of life. ![]() New research links circadian rhythm and sense of smell. Here's when your nose is most powerful. By David Orenstein-Brown Smell sensitivity varies over the course of a day, new research suggests. The pattern, according to the data collected by studying 37 teens, tracks with the body’s internal day-night cycle, or circadian rhythm. “This finding is very important for olfactory perception science,” says Rachel Herz, lead author of the study and an adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. “This hadn’t been known before and this is the first clear, direct evidence.” ![]() Humans' sense of smell isn't that bad. By Kendra Pierre-Louis “Most people with a healthy sense of smell can smell almost anything that gets in the nose,” said John MacGann, an associate professor of neuroscience at Rutgers University. “In fact, there used to be whole field of trying to find odors that people couldn't smell.” It used to be, because thanks to our roughly 400 smell receptors, finding things humans couldn’t smell was a bit of a fool's errand. Humans, as McGann makes clear in a review paper published today in the journal Science, are actually quite phenomenal sniffers. ![]() What are the ingredients of a good relationship? Trust? Communication? Compromise? By Ankur Paliwal How about a sense of smell? When researchers in the United Kingdom surveyed almost 500 people with anosmia (the loss of sense of smell), more than 50 percent of them reported feeling isolated, and blamed their relationship troubles on their affliction. “I worry I will never be able to share again properly in my social and sexual life—I feel like I am an observer,” lamented one anosmic. “It has reduced my desire,” said another. “So much of sexual closeness is wrapped up in smell: It’s how you know who you are with when the lights are off.”
|
Breaths comes in pairs except for two times in our lives – the beginning and the end. Archives
January 2021
|