Taste Test
I agree with some of the comments that the test is “too easy” given that they can still differentiate the foods due to texture/feel, but it’s still interesting to hear their commentary about how diminished the tasting part is.
“I can’t taste the flavor. Oh, it’s just bitter.”
YES. EXACTLY.
I really think this is why I have such a limited number of foods that I like and why I’m SO picky about texture. I don’t have as much to experience as others, so what I can experience is very impactful.
Interesting stuff.
SMELL YA LATER?????? ? ??? ?
Hi.
This is a really great article that discusses both the sense of smell (and the loss of it) and how we as a species have kind of lost our connection to food due to how we treat it as a “product” and have removed the sensory experiences of it.
SNIFF SNIFF BITCHES
Hey, I wrote about something like this in a short story like six years ago, haha.
As you might expect, there has been a lot fewer studies and a lot less research done into smell and fixing smell issues than any of the other senses. That’s one issue why there really hasn’t been any development of this type of technology yet.
Another issue is that smelling is a lot more complicated, physically, than things like hearing or even seeing, just because it is a chemical sense and is a lot more “fine-tuned” in terms of its various components compared to vision or hearing.
But the idea that the concept is “on the radar” now, though, is pretty cool!
Maybe one day…
This is FANTASTIC
I have a new theme song:
Everything in this is truth.
Scents and Scent-Ability
Want to know a weird thing I do every once and awhile? Every so often I catch myself making a mental comment about the smell of something. Even though I can’t smell.
Example: tonight (well, this morning) when I went to make dinner I opened my fridge. I’d just bought a bunch of broccoli and that (apart from a container of feta cheese) was the only thing in the fridge. I saw the broccoli and immediately thought, “man, this fridge smells like broccoli.”
Did it? No idea. But that was just my automatic reaction. Similar smell-related reactions happen every once and awhile.
So I have no idea if that means that I can kind of smell like on a subconscious level or I’m just accustomed to associating the idea of smell with things that people have told me have a distinctive odor (like broccoli or garbage or things like that) and thus automatically assume whatever contains such odorous things must be infused with the smell. I’d bet on the latter, but who knows.
Weird brain is weird.
Putting the “no” in “nose”
Not being able to smell usually doesn’t bother me (despite how much I bitch about it, haha). After all, since I’ve never been able to smell, I have no idea what I’m missing.
But every once and awhile, anosmia is incredibly inconvenient. For example, suppose I wear a shirt a few days ago and then end up wanting to wear it again for whatever reason. Apart from asking somebody else to smell said shirt, I literally have no way of knowing whether or not it’s stinky. There’s no way to check it. Same thing with, say the garbage. There is absolutely no way I can tell when it develops an odor without guesstimating how long it takes for the old broccoli stems in the trash can to start to rot and give off a foul smell. I just can’t ever know for sure (again, without asking some able-nosed person). Usually that’s not a problem, but sometimes it’s quite annoying.
Haha, sorry, just felt like mentioning that for whatever reason.
NO NOSE NO
Opus Oils announces the Official Release of the olfactory breakthrough, “Eau Pear Tingle” – A multi-sensory fragrance experience that was designed to be sensed by those with Anosmia.
“Eau Pear Tingle is as much about “sensation” as it is about the unique ability that perfume has to express periods of time. The fragrance starts out with a modern mouthwatering juicy twist that is redolent of green pear, pineapple and a hint of coconut. This is followed by the trigeminal effect of camphor, mint and black pepper that has a delightful side effect; it steadies the breath with a mild cooling sensation complemented by the essence of fir and wood shavings. The perfume dries down to an addictive classic base that is rich in sandalwood and musk. When you wear Eau Pear Tingle you journey from the present into the future and repose in the past. The fact that someone who has anosmia is able to sense this fragrance is truly an innovation in the art of perfumery. It is also cause for the industry to consider anosmia as a source of inspiration for scent creation targeting connoisseurs as well as the 65+ demographic that is regularly snubbed by the industry; whether they have age related smell loss or not…”
I WANT SOME.
Alright media, let’s get something straight:
Losing your sense of smell != losing your sense of taste. There’s a reason scientists/biologists have classified smell and taste as two different senses.
TASTE is what our taste buds give us. It refers to the five basic receptors in the mouth: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. You could rip out our olfactory bulbs and we’d still “taste” food. Taste is physically different than smell. It is the result of our tongues receiving chemical information, and we can basically get five pieces of information (the five tastes) about food from taste.
FLAVOR is everything else: it is the combination of every other sensory input that we experience when consuming food. Visual appearance, atmosphere, lighting, sound, music, texture, mouth-feel—and smell. Smell is obviously the big one here. While it too is chemical, smells can give us vastly more information about food than taste can, especially when combined with other environmental factors (sound, texture, and whatnot) and the fact that smell is the sense most closely linked to memory.
So while anosmics can most certainly taste food (or much of it, at least; garlic does absolutely nothing for me and onions are crunchy and nothing else), they miss out on the huge flavor component that smell provides.
Now that I think about it, I might guess that that’s the reason why a lot of acquired anosmics tend to claim that they’ve lost their sense of taste entirely as well—because they’re so used to experiencing food WITH that added flavor component from smell, once they lose that they’re reduced to just “tasting” food, which is likely exceedingly bland in comparison. Whereas the congenital anosmic—like me—has never experienced the extra flavor from smell and thus doesn’t “know” of the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) differences that smell can create. Therefore, for them, most foods are still very distinguishable from one another.
So there.
The next article I read that says “anosmics can’t tell the difference between a raw potato and an apple,” I’mma start stabbing fellows.
Stuff ‘n Noise, Noise n’ Stuff
Things.
1. This is the most horribly designed infographic ever.
2. This study is old news now I suppose, but I still find it disturbing. 53% of 16-30 year olds would give up their sense of smell for Facebook? What in the hell, people. I’d happily trade all social networking, perhaps even my blogging, for the ability to smell.
3. “Newton, Leibniz, and Pascal were all playing Hide-and-Seek, and it was Leibniz’s turn to count. Pascal immediately runs off and finds a great hiding spot, while Newton simply stands out in the open and draws a one-meter square on the ground around himself. Leibniz finishes counting, and when he looks up, he sees Newton. ‘Aha!’ he yells, ‘I found you!’ Newton responds, ‘No, you found one Newton per square meter- You found Pascal!’” (source)
DONE!
Again, sorry my blogs have been sucking always lately. Crazy semester is crazy.
TWSB: Nosy Mice
OH, WHAT NONSENSE IS THIS?!
Researchers at the University of Michigan have come up with a way to restore the sense of smell in anosmic mice!
Experimenting on mice that had lost their sense of smells due to a type of cilia dysfunction, researchers at the University of Michigan infected the mice with a modified strain of the common cold virus. The virus, containing the desired DNA sequences, rewrote the mice’s cells as the infection worked through their bodies. Once the mice had recovered, they were once again able to smell.
Dr. Jeffrey Martens explains that the virus was used to reintroduce neurons that transmit the sense of smell to regrow the cilia that the mice had lost. Unfortunately, though, the lack of cilia in the mice was due to a specific birth defect that affected a specific protein. A similar birth defect occurs in humans, but is usually fatal. So for now, there are no immediate applicable cures for human anosmics from these researchers’ findings, but hopefully the techniques and approach they’ve employed will lead them down the road that will one day allow those of us who lack olfaction to finally smell.
Documentary time!
Filmmaker Jacob LaMendola created this short video on anosmia that got featured on the New York Times website. Please watch it. Lots of interesting perspectives from congenital and non-congenitals alike.
SNIFFY
Holy crap!
“Sensonics, Inc. provides the medical, scientific and industrial communities with the best smell and taste tests for assessing chemosensory function.”
Shwing!
I’d love to try their Sniff Magnitude Test to see if anything’s actually registering and I just can’t tell, but there’s no way I can drop $6,000 on…well, anything right now, haha. I’d also like to see what the TR-06 Rion Electrogustometer is all about. I know my nose is shot…how screwy is my taste?
TWSB: This Smell Tastes Funny
From the site: “The Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation is dedicated to advancing research and knowledge on the effects of smell and taste on human emotion, mood, behavior and disease states.”
Just have a look around, especially at their research studies. Pretty cool stuff.
I wish I could smell, man. That’s another reason why I want to try out the 23andMe DNA thingy…they have an odor detection test of which I’d like to see my results. I’d just like to know at what level my sense is missing. Genetic issue? Brain structure issue? Olfactory bulb issues? “Olfactory bulb to brain” link issue? Something else?
Ah, the mysteries of life!
Maybe I’m meant to work at a dump or a skunk breeding farm or something.
Watermelon are seedy characters
Woah, hey, guess what?
Apparently Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s fame has no sense of smell.
I was unaware of this.
According to the article (forgive me for not referencing it with a link; I copied the text into a Word document but didn’t bookmark the page and now can’t find it in the vastness of the Tubes), “when the company began back in 1978, Jerry would make a flavor and see if it tasted good enough for Ben to notice. Ben also relies heavily on his sense of touch to enjoy food. That is why Ben & Jerry’s is well known for its distinctly chunky ice cream. The chunks of fruit and candy mixed in with the creamy ice cream is designed to provide an enjoyable sensation in your mouth even if you have trouble tasting it.”
Haha, that’s funny…I’ve always liked Ben & Jerry’s best because their ice cream is full of thingies.
Yay anosmics!
SKUNK ENCOUNTER!
So I went to the rec center late this evening, walked to WinCo for broccoli and lettuce, and got home finally around 11:30 or so (I take forever in the grocery store, I have issues). I go around back ‘cause my dad’s gone and the front door is always locked. Not expecting any creatures in the backyard, I turn the corner and surprise! Five skunks just chilling on the concrete. I must have startled them, ‘cause they all turned sharply and stuck their tails in the air like they were ready to spray. Not wanting to deal with the hilarity that would be me getting sprayed by skunks, I very slowly backed away until I was back around the corner from them. Since I couldn’t get in the front door, I picked up a chunk of bark and tossed it in their general direction, hoping to scare them away from the back door long enough for me to get inside.
It worked. And now all is well.
I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I got sprayed by a skunk. The scent does nothing to me, even in such close contact (our idiot dog got sprayed a few years back and I had to clean her), so I’d have to find a neighbor or some kind soul willing to odor test me to make sure I could get all the stink off.
Very glad that didn’t happen, haha.
This Week’s Science Blog: Good (and Smelly) Vibrations
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/02/do-vibrating-molecules-give-us-o.html
Smell has long been explained by the “lock and key” hypothesis, which holds that we smell when odor molecules—each with a particular shape—“lock” into matching smell receptors in the nose. What’s the problem with this hypothesis? The fact that there are only a few hundred of these receptors in the human nose, yet humans are able to detect thousands and thousands of different odors.
So how exactly do we smell, then?
Researchers at MIT are looking now at the role vibration plays in our ability to sniff stuff out. They believe that the reason certain odor molecules can have similar structures (like vodka and rotten egg odors, apparently), they have radically different vibration properties, which may be the key to our being able to differentiate between so many different odors with so few receptors.
The MIT scientists performed experiments with fruit flies in which the flies were placed into a maze into which two nearly identical odor molecules were pumped. Despite the molecular similarities, the flies showed preference to one odor over the other, indicating that they could tell a difference between the odors—a difference the scientists say is due to different vibration patterns.
While this study doesn’t apply to humans necessarily (obviously), the scientists are looking to extend its results to tests with mammals.
Because I’m me, I wonder how figuring out how smell really works would play into treatment for anosmia and parosmia. If at all. You never know, biology is weird.
This Week’s Science Blog: Does It Smell Dark in Here?
So apparently neurobiologists have genetically altered mice to smell light (MICE CAN SMELL PHOTONS NOW BUT I’M STILL STUCK WITH NOTHING, WTF?) with the goal to better understand how olfaction really works.
The reasoning behind this is that, while odors are obviously the best means by which to study olfaction, the odors themselves are so complex that we’re usually left with more problems than answers. Light, on the other hand, makes things easier.
So these scientists “made the nose act as a retina” in order to better characterize the patterns of activation within the brains of the rodents.
What did they find out?
First off, they found out that the structural patterns of olfactory activation in the brain does not on its own describe exactly how olfaction works.
Second, apparently the timing of the “sniff” plays an important role in how odors are perceived. Weird.
Anyway. Because I’m biased I do a disproportionate number of TWSBs on smell. And solar flares.
Today’s song: Circus by Britney Spears
This Week’s Science Blog: Extraverts are Nosy
Social science counts for these, but only sometimes.
I found this study today in which they concluded that extraverts have higher activity in their brains when smelling pleasant odors than those who do not self-report being extraverts.
Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to get images of participants’ brains (particularly the regional cerebral blood flow, or rCBF) as they were exposed to pleasant and unpleasant olfactory stimuli. Following this, participants completed the NEO Five-Factor Inventory, the results of which the researchers examined to see which participants were self-reported extraverts and which were not. The goal of the study was to see if there was an association between extraversion and rCBF, mainly because many psychologists feel that extraversion as it is currently defined is not the best way to describe exactly what it entails, as previous studies have shown that it more fundamentally represents a trait related to a bio-behavioral approach system that controls motivation.
So the study showed what they were looking for—higher extraversion scores were associated with greater activation in the amygdale and occipital cortex when exposed to pleasant odors. The authors also stated that the difference between how extraverts and introverts respond to such stimuli may also suggest that depression may be associated with decreased activation in certain parts of the brain (like the amygdale) when exposed to certain stimuli, since extraversion is negatively correlated with depression and other depressive disorders (I find this connection a bit fuzzy, but okay, sure).
And, you know, self-reported scores are always a little bit iffy, but whatev. I thought it was an interesting study.
Today’s song: Heather (Radio Edit) by Samin
I need to be more careful
One of the problems with not having a sense of smell is not being able to tell when perishable things go bad. If it’s not moldy or showing some other visible sign of expiration, I can’t tell, especially with dairy products.
This was proven today when I poured a glass of milk that was very disgustingly chunky. Turns out its “use by” date was May 9th. I used it last night (before it decided to go chunky) and it tasted just fine to me. And the feta I put on my pasta? Yeah, that expired back in April.
Someone needs to go to the store tomorrow.
And yeah, I know, I know, check the expiry labels. I’m a slacker, what do you want?
Also, more hilarity from 5 Second Films, ‘cause I didn’t catch all the freaking hilarious ones the first time:
- http://5secondfilms.com/watch/robodog
- http://5secondfilms.com/watch/wranglin
- http://5secondfilms.com/watch/twilight_interview_with_the_new_moon_blood_vampires_assistant_saga_diaries
- http://5secondfilms.com/watch/the_fire_island_players_present_5_second_films_ed_wood_2007 (because of the last one, holy crap)
- http://5secondfilms.com/watch/booyakasha
Today’s song: Your Love is My Drug by Ke$ha (I don’t care how trashy she is, this song is pretty great)
Madam, I’m a Madman!
Oh dear.
A conversation I had today with a soap vendor at the Ren Fair. Don’t know whether to laugh or cry (but I’m laughing as I’m typing this). Not verbatim, obviously, but pretty close, if I recall correctly:
Soap Vendor Guy: Smell this candle.
Me: No thanks, I can’t.
Guy: Can’t what?
Me: Smell.
Guy: Really?
Me: Yeah. I have anosmia.
Guy: What’s that?
Me: Um, it means I can’t smell.
Guy: You can’t smell anything?
Me: Nope.
Guy: Can you taste?
Me: Most things, yeah.
Guy: Well, how do you know?
Me: I’m sorry?
Guy: How do you know you can taste?
Me: Because I can…taste things…?
Guy: What does bread taste like?
Me: Bread, I guess…
Guy: Try smelling this one over here.
Me: (inhaling) Nope, nothing.
Guy: Seriously?
Me: Yeah.
Guy: Wow. So you really can’t smell?
Me: Nope.
Guy: Hmm.
Me: Yeah.
Guy: Here, try smelling THIS one.
I should have just faked it; I’ve been doing that a lot lately. A big deal? Nah. It’s funny sometimes, especially when I get conversations like this one going.
Oh, and here’s some enlightening material for y’all in case you’re interested:
http://www.anosmiafoundation.org/intro.shtml
http://www.anosmiafoundation.org/disability.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosmia
SECRETS FOR SEDUCING THE XY CHROMOSOMES!
Doughnuts.
Seriously. They rank as one of the most arousing scents for men. The smell of them increases penile blood flow.
Other scents include lavender, pumpkin pie, and vanilla. All are better than perfume, according to studies.
A song about smell?!
So I was at the U of I recreation building yesterday, working on my arms (because they’re incredibly weak and pathetic ) and this song comes on over the radio. It’s lyrics went something like this (at least, this is the part I could make out):
“Oooh, that smell
Can’t you smell that smell
Oooh, that smell”
etc, etc.
This song kinda freaked out. I went home and looked it up and it’s called “That Smell” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I’m not weirded out by it because I can’t smell…it’s just a weird song. A song about a smell.
Called “That Smell”.
Hm.
Eigenblogger 