Human Sense of Smell May be Faster, More Sensitive than Thought
But recent studies indicate that people are far more adept than scientists had originally thought at discerning the sequence of smells. Researchers have found that our sense of smell is far more adept than previously believed, correcting the traditional idea that olfaction (the sense of smell) is much slower compared to vision or hearing.
Your Nose Is Speedier Than Anticipated
Smell is probably the weakest of our remaining senses, behind sight and hearing. While scientists have largely been in agreement that our sense of smell is slow — Charles Darwin once deeming it “of slight service” to humans— human canine trainers, shepherds and others who work with animals thought otherwise. Yet fresh research paints a different picture. Some researchers now think that our sense of smell is as important to us in detecting fast changes the environment — though maybe not quite like those combat situations.
The Experiment: Smashing Together Our Thoughts on the Senses, or Simply…Smelling in milliseconds
Perhaps the greatest challenge in studying smell has been devising an experimental apparatus that accurately presents such quick succession of smells during one breath. To get around that problem, researchers designed an airtight box with two different odors timed to the millisecond. This device consisted of two tubes angled at different depths attached to a noseпiece. Miniature valves would then release the scents to participants at slightly different times as they took a sniff
This setup let the researchers direct smells to someone’s nose as brief as every 18 milliseconds, so they could test how rapidly individuals discover subtle shifts in gas odor.
Unexpected Outcome: Humans Can Detect Smell Differences in 60 Milliseconds
For the study, 229 subjects smelled various odor pairs (for example apple-like/flowery or lemony/cuminy). Triggered by this odor were instructed to indicate whether the sequence of odors always changed with each sniff Surprisingly, even when the smells were only sent 60 milliseconds apart — far faster than previous research had suggested humans could ever sniff a stink in short order — subjects managed to tell they came in sequence with accuracy at slightly more than half of the trials (63 percent).
The findings contradict previous thinking that it required at least 1,200 milliseconds for humans to notice changes in the rank order of odors.
Although the extent to which these scents were mixed up could be consciously discerned by participants, they found it more difficult to identify exactly what was in each place. Subjects only did significantly better than chance for some of the odors — lemon and onion, among others — when they were 167 milliseconds apart. This indicates that the order of smells reaching our nose might affect how we perceive them.
Even Faster Than the Blink of an Eye: An Analogous Comparison for Smell vs Vision
To give you an idea, the human eye generally blinks in 180 milliseconds. In other words, our sense of smell works almost as fast as color perception (pictures here), which is one visual system hallmark doing things quite quickly. This is in stark contrast to the traditional thinking that olfaction occurs several minutes after inhaling an odor.
Technology and Medicine Implications
It could be great for olfaction training in people who have lost their sense of smell, and also electronic noses or any kind of odour-based game that you want. The researchers believe that these advances could result in important clinical and socioeconomic implications, improving therapies for those with olfactory dysfunction.
A Better Understanding of Our Sense of Smell
They also provide important insights regarding the mechanisms of olfaction. Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta added that being able to distinguish within a single snort could allow animals—even humans—to determine not only what is smelled, but also where it is coming from.
As with recognizing musical notes, the study finds that timing is also key for smell. This discovery could pave the way for further inquiry in both neuroscience and sensory biology as it lends insight into how humans actually detect certain odors.
Filling the Olfactory Gap
The study of human olfaction has been — until now — the poor stepchild among our senses. Frequently, we think that were primarily visual creatures our powerful sense of smell has been undermined. But this new research starts to change that, by highlighting the fact that our noses can pick up quick changes in smell—just as most of us already know our eyes catch swift alterations detachment from light and shade.
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