Yet for all the meagerness of our hardware, we humans can become better nosehounds with startling ease. In one experiment, Dr. Gottfried said, subjects exposed to a single floral scent for just three and a half minutes markedly improved their ability to discriminate among whole families of flower odors.
— From The Nose, an Emotional Time Machine at today’s New York Times.
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Had a quick look at this and will read the article a little later!
Really interesting.
I have known a young woman who had had plastic surgery on her nose and after the operation she had lost her sense of smell completely… of course she could not taste food either anymore.
I have had a nose-operation years ago, but I had a partially blocked sinus and therefore very bad sinusitis almost permanently, and since then I smell less good at the left side, but somehow the right side has taken over well.
This article just made me remember that woman and reminded me of my problem on the left side of my nose.
What a shame, did she regret her plastic surgery?
R, there is a hysterical bit in the Avery Gilbert book what the Nose Knows about an experiment in Berkeley (of course, lol) where he had people blindfolded, crawling on the ground following the scent of chocolate. They performed as well as dogs, IIRC.
Hey, if it was *good* chocolate, I'd be willing, HA!
I don't know if she regretted it then, but I in the long run I think she does.