Olfaction And Brain Analysis

23.The part of the limbic system located in the center of the brain, this structure relays sensory information from the lower part of the brain to the proper areas of the cortex and PROCESSES some sensory information before sending it to its proper area and is called the thalamus.

In previous studies, Frank and Byram’s article suggest that taste and smell interactions are dependent on taste and odor. In their experiments, they gave subjects strawberry

* The limbic system is a loosely connected network of structures located roughly along the border between the cerebral cortex and deeper subcortical.

Activators of Adenylate Cyclase would cause production of cAMP, which is a second messenger. This would amplify the signal and increase the extent of the scent.

There are six senses in total and these are known as languages of the mind, or ‘modalities’. These are Sight, hearing, feeling, smell and taste, although the last two can be put into the ‘feeling’ category. We use all of our senses in a particular situation but all of us will have a favourite which we are more comfortable with and are likely to fall back on in times of crisis. (Chrysalis pg. 4)

Tastes and smells are the perception of chemicals in the air. The close relationship with smell and taste helps people perceive the flavors of food. Anyone with a cold has experienced that moment where they can not perceive the flavors of food because their smell has been “impaired” due to a stuffy nose. Taste itself is focused chemicals that have sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or savory taste. “The sense of taste influences food

Decreased interest in olfaction may be related to early work which contrasted varying levels of olfactory abilities among animals, highlighting primates as deficient in this sense. In Turner’s 1891 paper The Convolutions of the Brain, he proposed a classification of Mammalia into three groups 1) Anasmotics, where the organs of smell are absent and included dolphins and whales, 2) Macrosmatics, defined by animals with a highly developed sense of smell and included ungulates, carnivores and most mammals, and 3) Microsmatics where the sense of smell is “feeble” as in pinnipeds, some whales, and apes and man. This idea of apes and humans, indeed, primates in general having a poor sense of smell was corroborated by Negus in 1958 and Le

Senses airborne chemical molecules • Related to memories & emotions • Consists of 10 million rods embedded in the olfactory epithelium – responding to different chemicals

Smells connection to emotion was also discussed, it turned out to be molecules with receptor signals capable of triggering memory through the olfactory part of our brain and the hippocampus, the site of memory

* Sense of taste helps you to decide whether the food is eatable or not. Sensory organs in tongue helps us to decide what we like and what we do not

The smell receptors interact with the molecules of these vapors and transmit sensations to the brain. We need only a little amount of molecules of substance to trigger an impulse of smell in a nerve end, and we can smell more than ten thousand different scents. If it is a new scent it is possible to remember the scent and identify it again later. The scent captures one’s memory of the place; the nose makes the eyes remember. For the blind people, the sense of smell can help awareness of one’s location. Odour can also relate to hunger and the desire to consume. Since it is not possible to name all the odours, spatial qualities or experiences are often associated with scents. Positive experiences of smell can be used in design to induce positive memories or associations to a space, while negative smells can do the opposite. Bringing certain smells into a designed space can immediately stimulate emotions, guide us, or distract us. Designer Valerie Trent cites research that connects smell and memory; “People can often recall aromas from childhood or a distinctive odor they’ve only smelled once. Whatever your particular nose prefers, smells do enhance comfort and

In the article, “A Spectroscopic Mechanism for Primary Olfactory Reception,” by Luca Turin talks about the theory of primary olfactory. In this article he said, “Olfactory receptors respond not to the shape of the molecule but their vibrations,” which was a theory proposed by Wright Dyson (Turin). Dyson came up with this theory because he noticed that molecules can look very similar but smell completely different; the molecules can also look completely different and smell the same as well. For instance the molecular makeup of smell in bananas and pears, they can look very similar, but smell like two different things.

The definition of smell is the faculty or power of perceiving odors or scents by means of the organs in the nose. According to the National Institution on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) your sense of smell is a part of the chemosensory system. The sense of smell comes from olfactory sensory neurons. The nostrils act as a passage way for smell along with the roof of your mouth, both are passage ways to the brain. Without being able to smell foods would taste bland. We use are sense of smell every day, when a person has their windows down and they are driving down the road and you smell that great Barbeque place and your mouth starts to water you are using the sense of smell.

After each specific smell neuron is triggered, it travels down the axon where it congregates like a transfer station with other cells into the glomerulus. Inside the glomerulus, the olfactory axons meet up with the dendrites of the mitral cells which relays the signal to the brain. For each mitral cell there are many olfactory axons synapsing with it and each represents a single volatile chemical. As a result, every combination of an olfactory neuron and a mitral cell is like a single note and the smell coming off food triggers countless of those combinations forming a delicious musical cord of

T F 1. Generally when one loses his/her sense of smell, he/she also loses the sense