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Sense of Smell More Developed Than Once Believed
Produced by Gianofer Fields on Thursday, January 17, 2008
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Tedd, Caryn and Phill fostering harmony in the workplace. |
In a recent study by Northwestern University, researchers found that the human sense of smell is far more developed than once believed. As it turns out the human sense of smell doesn’t play second fiddle to other members of the animal kingdom.
The sense of smell is one of our most ancient senses. According to Northwestern University’s Dr. Jay Gottfried vertebrates are not the only members of the animal kingdom who use smell to understand their world.
GOTTFRIED: Anything from amoeba to slime molds to jellyfish are essentially using a kind of sense of smell. So everything from reproduction to feeding to evading threat, escaping predicators all of this fundamentally relied on the sense of smell going back millions and millions of years.
Dr. Gottfried who teaches neurology and psychology, says that over time humans have fine tuned this sense. The study was designed to try and uncover some of the mechanisms by which humans can discriminate so many smells in the environment.
GOTTFRIED: I would give you one minty smell for three and a half minute. Let your nose relax for a bit and then test you with a family of different mint smells menthol, spearmint and peppermint. We found that after you were exposed to this one mint smell, you essentially became a mint expert. So you are now able to better differentiate among the different mint smells.
Gottfried also uses other smells as controls. Like rose and an extremely unpleasant extract for pure foot odor. He says that we experience smell passively but when we pay more attention to the scents in our environment we can improve our sense of smell and possibly our quality of life.
GOTTFRIED: If you want to learn a little bit about wine. Go to the store and pick up a couple of bottles of Cabernet and give then a good smell for a few minutes. And even that alone should now begin to help you distinguish better between those different wines. And that could be the beginning of a wonderful relationship with red wine.
My relationship with red wine is a healthy one; perfumes, not so much. To me, most eau de toilettes smell like bug spray. So, I was interested fine tuning my appreciation for perfumes. Tedd Neenan is the proprietor of the Aroma Workshop on Halsted Street, where he creates perfumes from over two hundred bottles of scents that line his shelves. He says that perfume is not like a muumuu. One size does not fit all.
NEENAN: Each human is a different organism and has different kinds of receptors that take in scents and react to them slightly differently. So, while it is very important what another person smells like, whether or not you are going to like them or not, there isn’t one scent that every body likes.
Caryn Klein knows exactly what he means.
KLEIN: The scent I used to use my co-worker told me she hated.
Ted and I were busy creating my scent, a mixture of lavender, bergamot, sage and Big Sur when Caryn and her son walked in. She an altruist, willing to give up her signature sent to keep peace in the workplace. It’s been two years since she has worn perfume to work. While she is not sure of what she wants. She does have something in mind.
KLEIN: I’d like to be able to wear it everyday but I’d like it to be a little bit sexy.
Tedd poses a few questions to narrow down the field. He places drops of the scents she chooses on thin white strips of paper. Caryn picks three bottles. Two are blends. One is pure oil. The first bottle is labeled BABY and smells like the top of a baby’s head. The second is called Chaos a spicier, more adult scent. The third choice is pure Lilac oil, for Caryn, that scent is nostalgic.
KLEIN: I used to put lilac water on the baby’s heads.
Caryn tries a few other variations. She adds sage, rose then lavender with the chaos/baby combination. But her nose carries her back to one mix.
KLEIN: My official decision is Lilac, Baby and Chaos.
FIELDS: Take that missy.
KLEIN: See how that flies in the workplace.
She names her scent quietly sexy. But for her son Phil it means something else.
WEGLARZ: For me it’s more of a maternal scent because she has that nostalgic tone to it. It’s not quite as sexy. It’s motherly. KLEIN/WEGLARZ it’s about love…it captures the love. Motherly love, that’s what I would call it.
All of my life I have either been delighted or terrorized by my sense of smell. I’m the first to wrinkle up my nose and say do you smell that long before my family or friends recoil at the offending odor. Why? Northwestern University’s Dr. Gottfried says that women have a keener sense of smell than men. He says that as children, girls spend more time navigation the world of scent, like in the kitchen or at the perfume counter. Men on the other hand don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the smells around them.
I'm Gianofer Fields, Chicago Public Radio.
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