WEBVTT - The Scent of Cognition 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:14.000 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.400 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. You know, 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:18.560 we've spent a lot of time on this podcast talking 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:22.639 about the senses, breaking down the senses and getting down 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:26.800 to not only the scientific underpinnings of our sense experience, 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:29.400 but also the sort of mysteries of it that we 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:33.640 take for granted every day. That's true, and uh sent 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:36.159 is one of those things that we often take for granted, 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:38.600 but it turns out to be the hum dinger of 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:40.839 the senses. And we're going to talk about that today. 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:43.960 And we thought, well, heck, while we're rolling out sense 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:48.400 and smells, we might as well roll out a little proost. Yeah. 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:53.159 Marcel Proust eighteen seventy one through French novelist, critic and says, 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:55.840 best known for his novel In Search of Lost Time 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:59.440 a k a. The Remembrance of Things Past. Yes, because 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:01.920 in this novel he has what is now known as 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:06.600 the Proust moment, this sort of memory that is evoked 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.720 by a food and in particular scent, which is as 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:13.520 we know, bound up with food. Now This is him 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:17.160 describing the shell shaped cookie called Madeline. He says, quote, 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:19.720 I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:22.080 in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.200 No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:28.880 touched my palette than a shutter ram through me, and 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:33.040 I stopped intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:37.560 to me. An exquisite pleasure invaded my senses. M hmm. 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:39.880 You know, I think we we've all had those moments 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:43.520 in our lives where some some scent or some taste 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:46.919 associated with the scent, uh finds. Maybe we're just walking 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:49.240 down the street and it just we end up just 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:52.080 time traveling in our mind back to some some moment 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:55.120 in the past that we we maybe don't even think 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:58.080 about all that often, you know, and we tend to 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:00.760 not even think about how it's acting on our behavior. 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:03.720 We've brought this up before. There was a study on 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:08.360 altruism and freshly baked bread, and I won't go into 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:12.040 that because it's it's a bit lengthy, but basically, people 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:16.800 who were smelling the scent, we're much more inclined to 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:21.359 help other people. Yeah, uh, Now, Prost goes on to 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:23.440 to to summarize things a little bit, and he says, 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.320 when nothing else subsists from the past, after the people 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.680 are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, the 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:33.840 smell and taste of things remain poised for a long time, 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:39.040 like souls bearing resiliently on tiny and almost impalpable drops 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:43.520 of their essence. The immense edifice of memory. Indeed, and 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:45.800 that is that's the sort of thing that's behind the 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:48.720 wall of smell, And that's what we're gonna look at today. Yeah, 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:51.080 it is weird, how like even the most comforting smells 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:53.600 in the world, you know, the smell of you know, 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:56.560 of a loved one's hair or skin, or or you know, 0:02:56.680 --> 0:02:59.760 just the sort of house smells that that give you 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:01.920 that warn't feeling inside of yourself, well you know, your 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:04.680 favorite to meal, what have you? Something with you with 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.920 rich connections. They're not something that you end up just 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:11.760 craving all the time. But but it's only when you 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:15.960 actually encounter them that you that they really take hold. Yeah, 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.520 because it's light taking a book off the shelf of memory. Now, 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.680 before we kind of get into these more specifics of 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:25.919 memory and smell, let's look at a little cent one 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:30.919 oh one, because think about all of these possible smell surrounding. 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:33.760 You might say possible, because this sense have to be 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:37.440 volatile enough to spew out microscopic particles in the air 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:41.920 and then get on your noses radar system. Right. Um, 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.040 so your kitchen countertops or even this table that we're 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:48.920 podcasting at that is not a volatile material. But let's 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:51.120 say nol our producer brings in a little bit of 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:53.760 warmed over cabbage. Then all of a sudden, that is 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:59.240 a huge volatile funk. Now. In the book A Natural 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:01.840 History of the Sense of by Diane Ackerman, she writes, quote, 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.920 each day, we breathe about twenty three thousand, forty times 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:08.960 and move around four hundred and thirty eight cubic feet 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:12.080 of air. It takes us about five seconds to breathe, 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:15.520 two seconds to inhale, and three seconds to exhale. And 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:19.240 in that time molecules of odor flood through our systems. 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:23.760 Inhaling and exhaling, we smell odors. Smells code us, swirl 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:27.200 around us and enter our bodies, emanate from us. We 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:31.680 live in a constant wash of them. And get this, 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:37.000 this is really interesting According to research by Stanford University scientists, 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:41.120 which was published in a November fourth issue of Nature, 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:46.159 each nostril of the human nose is tuned to smell 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:50.760 some odors better than others, and the specialization moves back 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:54.120 and forth from one nostril to the other, so one 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:56.799 a certain smell might be more of a left nostril 0:04:56.839 --> 0:04:59.440 smell as opposed to a right nostril smell. Yeah. So 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.440 there's turns out that there's a difference in airflow of 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.599 nostrils and that effects scent detection, which kind of gets 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.839 you to the question maybe you never even wondered about 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:12.560 why do we have two nostrils anyway? Yeah, well it 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:17.480 turns out there's two different systems detecting different odors. Huh. Yeah. 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:19.760 I was kind of, without really thinking about it, thought 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:21.880 it was just so that if snot clogged up one, 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:23.680 you still had another one. You know. It's kind of 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:26.719 like having a double barrel shotgun. Right. Indeed, all right, so, 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.880 as we've discussed, you have these airborne molecules peeling off 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:32.640 of things. A lot of molecules peeling off of something 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.200 like freshly baked pie. Uh, not so much with say 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:40.800 a lump of steel. Okay. So these molecules are floating around, 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:45.039 they enter the nostrils and then they hit the olfactory 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.440 epithelium is the center of the of olfactory sensation. Now 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:52.240 it takes up we're talking about a mirror one square 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:55.599 inch of the superior portion of the nasal cavity. Mucas 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:59.200 coats the epithelium surface and it helps dissolve these odorance 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:02.839 so they can all they gonna be properly uh taken in. Okay, 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.839 Then these highly specialized olfactory receptor cells come into play. Uh. 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:11.120 These are neurons with knob shaped tips called dendrites and 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:13.560 old factory here's that bind with the odorants cover each 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:17.520 of these dent drives. Next, with the odorant having successfully 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:21.200 stimulated the receptor cell, the cell send an electrical impulse 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:24.359 to the old factory bulb. And that is part of 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:26.760 the brain's limbic system. That's gonna be key here in 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:33.320 a moment because of the olympic systems relationship to memory. Okay. Now, specifically, 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:36.520 each olfactory receptor type sends its electrical impulse to a 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:40.800 particular microregion of the olfactory bulb. So we've gone from 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.359 molecule on on all the way up into the brain. 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.040 And then this is where the sensation of smell as 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:50.080 we experience it uh in our minds emerges. Now to 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.920 underscore how important smell is, let me just point out 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:56.400 that if you destroy a neuron in the brain, it's 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.880 finished forever. It won't regrow. If you damage neurons and 0:06:59.880 --> 0:07:03.400 your or eyes or ears, both organs will be irreparably damaged. 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.240 But the neurons and the nose uh, those are replaced 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:12.520 about every thirty days. And according to Diane Ackerman, unlike 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.400 any other neurons in the body, they stick right out 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:18.880 and wave in the air current like animonees on a 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:22.200 coral reef. And I thought this is such a great 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:26.240 similar especially if you consider some research that was done 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:30.280 by the Cavalry Institute for Systems Neuroscience. They found that 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.600 when it came to scent, there are synchronized brain waves 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:38.440 of twenty to forty hurts moving through the brain and 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.760 these are signals from the nose that translate and they 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:45.760 connect to memories in this sort of orchestrated symphony of 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.400 signals in your brain. And the reason they know that, 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:51.880 of course is rats. Because we've discussed in an earlier 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:56.000 episode to give us a good amount of information about 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.400 these types of things and systems in the brain. Now, 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:02.160 the researchers took seen to twenty electrodes. They place them 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:04.760 in the hippocampus in the different areas of the into 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:08.480 rhinal cortex and rats, and this allowed them to observe 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:13.280 this wave like action and synchronousity happening during the scent 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:17.600 memory acquisition in rats. Now I mentioned that the olfactory 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:20.240 bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, again area 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:23.800 associated with memory and feeling. That the bulb has intimate 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:27.200 access to the amygla, which processes emotion in the hippocampus, 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:32.040 which is responsible for associative learning. And this this is key, okay, 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:36.360 because it's why smell can call up those memories and 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:42.679 powerful responses almost instantaneously, cutting out we're almost cutting out conscience, remembrance. 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:45.679 And the key triggers here are conditioned responses. You smell 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:49.160 something and this links to an event, person, thing, or moment. 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.440 The brain forges the link between smell and memory, and 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:55.520 then when you smell it again, even years later, decades later, 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:59.079 the link is already there lights up again. Now, since 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:01.640 we encounter most of these new odors in our youth, 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:03.560 because I mean, you know, there are a lot of 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:05.439 smells out there, but you're gonna hit something. Most of 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:08.160 the key ones, you know pretty early on, since you 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:10.640 smell most of them in your youth. Smells often some 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:14.320 of these strong feelings of nostalgia, mental time travel, taking 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:17.079 us back to bake pies of our youth, or or 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:22.360 even it's not even necessarily a positive, you know, or 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:25.600 at least subjectively positive smell that we end up having 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:28.680 these positive associations with. Uh. It could be something like 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:33.480 chlorine in a pool, something that is harsh chemical uh. 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:35.880 And to some people with a different association, and they 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:37.920 might they might not have the same kind of positive 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.000 swelling of emotion around it. But once that's forged in 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:43.720 the brain, that's the connection we take when we smell 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:47.160 it again. Uh. And interestingly enough, we even begin making 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:51.240 these emotional connections to smells before we're even born. Infants 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.199 who have been exposed to alcohol, cigarette smoke, or garlic 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.199 in the womb actually show a preference for these smells 0:09:57.280 --> 0:10:02.280 later on. And that's really interesting of her. Before that, Um, 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.240 some of your food choices can influence the diet of 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:08.600 your child later on. But who knew that even smoke 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:12.320 would be something that would be incorporated into the landscape 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:15.760 of smell for an infant um. Now we're going to 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.839 take a quick break. When we get back, we are 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:22.000 going to look at how smell influenced the formation of 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:32.439 the primitive brain. All right, we're back. We're talking about smell. 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:35.640 We're talking about and be a very primal sense, if 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.400 not the most primal sense. Yeah, and if you veer 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:40.679 away from humans for a moment and you look at 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:43.920 smell and its role in the animal world, will you 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:48.559 see that it becomes maybe ten or fifteen episodes spirhirling 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:50.200 out of this. So we're not going to go way 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:52.560 deep into this, but we wanted to mention some of 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.400 the ways that sensory world is interacting um with scent 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:02.520 in organisms. And that's because it really plays a bigger role, 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:07.120 a more integral role in identification and communication. So, for instance, 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:09.960 if you think about a tobacco leaf that's being munched 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:14.000 on by a caterpillar, well, that tobacco leaf will emit 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.439 something called a green leaf volatile and this is a 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:20.360 chemical that once it's airborne, it acts as a kind 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:26.120 of s o s two predators of the caterpillar, like wasps, 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.720 and it's essentially saying to those wops, hey, there's something 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:32.520 there's there's this blood sucker on me or this you know, 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:36.520 leaf sucker on me, and it is completely distracted right now. 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:38.880 And I know you love a good juicy caterpillar to 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:41.640 swoop down and eat it. And that in and of 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:45.079 itself is amazing, this kind of chemical communication. But then 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:49.320 you consider the research that's been done on rodents, and 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:53.880 that we can see that rodents can actually detect fear 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:58.200 through scent alone, or even considering something like a silver 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.520 tip grizzly, which can smell a carcass up to eighteen 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:04.960 miles away, which would be really important to aggressively right 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:07.600 because that could be a second lunch, a second breakfast, 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:10.800 a snack, you know, any sort of leftovers. And these 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:14.880 are just just a tiny bit of examples of the 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.040 rich roll of scent in the animal world. But it 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:20.720 gets even more micro than that. Yeah, And and in 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.560 doing so, it gets even more telling about just this 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:26.640 idea of smell as this primary sense of the connection 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:31.000 between smell and survival, because in the you know, your 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:33.920 average day, we're not smelling out our dinner. We're not saying, 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:36.040 all right, you know, time to get some food on 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:37.800 the table, let me go stick my nose out in 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:41.040 the air. But we see this, we we see this 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:45.200 even in bacteria. According to a two thousand and ten 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:50.040 study from the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, UH, 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:55.240 bacteria can detect ammonia. Ammonia is an important source of 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:58.760 nutrients for bacteria, and it causes bacteria to form slimy 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:04.199 colonies called bio films UH and smelling it. Identifying ammonia 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.640 may help the microbes to locate their food sources and 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:12.800 avoid competitors. Now, critics of this study, you know, easily say, well, 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:15.000 that's not smell. You're just you're you're talking about something 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:17.840 far more primitive. But if you break down smell, if 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:21.559 you define smell, it's just simply sensing a volatile molecule, 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.680 sensing key molecules that are peeling off. As as we 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:27.160 mentioned at the beginning, then that's exactly what's going on 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:31.560 with these bacteria. They're not smelling oxygen because it doesn't 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:33.800 have a smell. It's always there around them. But they 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.760 can smell an important gas that signals food, which I 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:42.319 think is really root to all animals, right, because this 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:45.040 is the simplest and most ancient form of life from 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:48.520 which everything else evolved. In this sort of food detection 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:52.800 device would really play into how the primitive brain would develop. 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.400 So Diane Ackerman's book, again, A Natural History of Senses, 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:59.440 goes into this. She writes that chemical detection was so 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:03.240 important that the scent sensitive tissue sitting atop the nerve 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:06.920 cord developed into a primitive brain. Moreover, and this is 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:10.600 probably the most mind blowing part of this. Our cerebral 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:16.200 hemispheres were originally buds from the old factory stocks. Huh. 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:19.000 So it's it's one of the prime primal scoops of 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:22.440 ice cream on which our our additional brain scoots were placed. Yeah, 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:24.520 I mean these are sort of the original blueprints, right. 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:29.800 That called back to this ability to detect detect chemicals 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:32.240 that is like the base stock of the brain here. 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:34.240 So much of it is fascinating, and that there's a 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:38.120 certain level of understanding that we have conscious understanding about 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:40.040 what's going on with our our sense of smell, and 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:42.280 then there's all this other stuff that's going on under 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.080 the surface. And a great example of This comes from 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:49.760 a two thousand and fourteen study from Manl Chemical Sensus Center. Uh, 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.720 show that that people can actually smell differences in dietary 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:57.760 fat in foods. In other words, the nose nose when 0:14:57.800 --> 0:14:59.640 you try to pull a fast one on it with 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:04.720 oh fat alternatives. Yeah. So have this breakdown, well, eight 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:09.600 participants in two locations, Philadelphia and the Netherlands. Uh. And 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.400 that's key here because we're gonna be dealing with with 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.480 milk and uh, individuals in the Netherlands consume a lot 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:20.320 more milk than individuals in Philadelphia. Um, they have cream cheese. 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:22.720 Even that. Yeah, even though they have cream cheese. Uh, 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:25.880 the Netherlands are still they're still they're still coming out 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:28.800 on top, all right. So these participants, uh, they were 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:32.360 made to smell samples of milk with varying amounts of fat, 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.000 and they found that participants could actually distinguish among the 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:39.400 samples based on their fat content. And and really this 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:42.080 this makes perfect sense. It's that means as simple as this, fatty, 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.920 high calorie foods equal energy and energy equal survival. So 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:48.840 it makes perfect sense from evolutionary standpoint. You want to 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:52.760 be able to sniff out the best source of nutrients. Um. 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:56.600 Now it's not learned behavior, it's it's in bread behavior. UM. 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.440 I already mentioned that the Dutch drink more milk than Americans, 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:03.480 but both were equally good at sniffing out the fatty goodness. Likewise, 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.240 participant weight didn't play into the results either, and they 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:09.840 made sure that they were isolating just the fat by 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:13.400 using powdered milk rather than fresh. Now, there's still some 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:17.880 lingering questions here that the researchers are looking into. UM. 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:21.040 For starters, fat molecules and milk are not very volatile. 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:23.320 They don't peel off and float around as easily, and 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:26.280 therefore shouldn't be that easily smelled. But they think they 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:30.240 might be attaching to other compounds that are huh yeah, 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:32.920 especially powdered milk right, because it doesn't have anything to 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:36.840 help dissolve and create a vapor. UM. I think what 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.760 that points to to me is that humans ability to 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:43.520 suss out smell is you know, a little bit more 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:45.800 complex than we thought. I mean, not dog complex. We 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.360 don't have that kind of sensory world available to us, 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:52.200 but certainly a little bit more enhanced than we thought. 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:56.520 And I wanted to point to this idea um that 0:16:57.640 --> 0:16:59.920 or this previous idea that it was thought that we 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:03.080 could sniff out about ten thousand smells. Well, in two 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.320 thousand and fourteen, researchers from the Rockefeller University and the 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:10.800 Howard Hughes Medical Institute put together an experiment that would 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:14.320 blow that ability to detect ten thousand smells out of 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.600 the water. And the researchers started with bottles of one 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:22.040 hundred and twenty eight distinct smells, so think about grass 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:26.080 or citrus, right, and they mixed up to thirty different 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:29.360 chemicals with it to create unfamiliar smells. And they did 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:32.119 that because they wanted to really obscure what it was 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:35.480 and really have people work with their sense of smell 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.560 to suss out what sort of chemicals or odors they 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:42.840 were sniffing. And so they took three bottles and two 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:45.679 of those bottles were the same and one was different 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:50.119 from it, and they had twenty six study participants quaffing 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.439 these odors. And what they did is they calculated the 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:58.560 percentage of these mixtures that participants could distinguish, and then 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:02.719 they handed that data over to a mathematician who figured 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:06.240 out the number of possible unique odors that could be 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:09.880 made from the mixtures of the chemicals. Okay, I'm gonna 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:22.520 guess it's it's no dan no, how many one trillion? Yeah, 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:25.440 So okay, here's the thing, though, this doesn't mean that 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:32.200 now one connoisseurs need to start using one trillion descriptors exists, right. 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.720 They are trying really hard, uh, but because this is 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:40.880 more about distinguishing rather than identifying the smells, and it's 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:45.879 really no indication that we're actually able to pick up 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:47.840 on a trillion smells, because you think about you may 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.920 not even be met with one trillion smells in your lifetime. 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:55.000 It's uh, it's more just that that that's the upper 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:59.600 limit of possible sense. And the reason why they did 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.879 this study is they wanted to discredit that idea of 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.560 tenos smells because it's from the early twentieth century and 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:10.879 it's not really tied to any specific data set. Is 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:13.080 just one of some one of those ideas that arose, 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.000 and so this was that, um, this was their chance 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:20.800 to say, no, smell is so much more complicated and 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:25.040 nuanced than that, and our ability to detect it. We've 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:26.840 been kind of given it short shrift for a while. 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:29.199 We have and uh, you know, I mean as far 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:30.959 as the senses go, you can sort of look at 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:33.760 our technology as a good, uh, a good way to 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:36.480 gauge how much emphasis we put on on it, right 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:38.560 because right now I can we either of us can 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:41.280 pick up our smartphone and we can we can send 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:45.159 visual information, we can send auditory information. We've discussed all 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:48.320 the different haptic technologies in place where we're we're a 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:50.080 lot of a lot of people are working really hard 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:55.520 on being able to transmit feeling and touch across the internet. Hugs, 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:58.080 We've talked about that. But but where's the smell, where's 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:04.119 the where's the stank? Well. On June fourteen, the first 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:09.040 ever transatlantic scent message was transmitted from New York City 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.399 to Paris, and Harvard professor David Edwards and his co 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:17.520 inventor Rachel Field. They they sent an image, an electronic 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:21.359 image tagged with a scent, to Le la Boutoire, a 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:24.760 contemporary art and design center in Paris, and they're a 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:29.040 device called an O phone decoded the message and reproduced 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:33.199 the scent using its aromatic cartridges. Yeah, and that the 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:35.920 scent message that is sent, by the way, is the 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:38.800 the scent email. If you will. The scent text message 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.399 is called an O note, just just to get the 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:46.040 lingo out there. UM. This uh, this is a technology 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:50.160 that is still very much in its infancy. Um. Basically 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:52.200 like where they are now with it is they're they're 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:55.040 they're looking at being able to capture somewhere in the 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:58.679 area of three thousand unique scents. Uh. And it's and 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:00.840 you'd have to go to an O phone hotspot to 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:02.920 pick one up if somebody sent one to you, Because 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:06.520 it ultimately gets into that area of printing smells, of 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:11.120 using primary odors as a palette, and then using combining 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:14.280 those to try and create at least an approximation of 0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:16.440 what you're going for with what you're trying to scent. 0:21:17.000 --> 0:21:20.560 And so the exciting part of this is that scent 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:26.040 could begin to be woven into uh, these different types 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:28.800 of media that we consume. And so right now we 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:32.080 have music right is being woven into the media that 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:34.399 we enjoy, and a lot of times we don't think 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:36.960 about how powerful that is. That even if it's just 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:40.840 background music, it changes the mood. It gives your brain 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:43.359 a little bit something else to hook onto and reframe 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:46.520 the information you're getting. So just imagine if right now 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:48.840 you guys were listening to us and we were just 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:53.040 piping through some cabbage or or freshly baked bread, and 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:57.359 how that might change the way that you're considering the information. Yeah, 0:21:57.480 --> 0:21:59.600 or even even more than that. It's like, and when 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:01.919 I think of out our, our our use of music, 0:22:02.680 --> 0:22:04.800 if we're listening to music, whe we're listening to a 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:07.520 complete composition with various notes to kind of take us 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:11.439 on a sonic journey. So I can easily imagine a 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:14.840 time when you plug in I guess your nostril plugs 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:17.840 or whatever. And uh, and instead of printing with just 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:19.959 a single smell, without it, without it just being a 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:23.760 matter of bread or cinnabon or a certain flower, you 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:26.560 go on a smell journey, say through a garden or 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:30.439 through the French countryside or a spice market and Marrakesh 0:22:30.640 --> 0:22:34.840 or something of that nature. Like it. Once the technology 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:37.880 is there and more available, like I feel like we'll 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:41.440 sort of discover its uses more so than we can 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:44.479 sort of predict them. Yeah. Indeed, a scratch and sniff 0:22:44.600 --> 0:22:50.800 podcast in right, and already there is some use of smells. 0:22:51.000 --> 0:22:54.159 Um and I'm talking in particular with these scent artists 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:58.800 Setel tol Us who used sense as a study aid 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:01.439 for students, which I other we brilliant because we already 0:23:01.440 --> 0:23:03.720 know that when you're trying to learn information that your 0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:06.359 brain is tagging things in its mind like a map, right, 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:10.159 because it's very spatial, and layer upon that some some 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.439 smells and you can really get the thumb tacks in 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:16.520 a little bit deeper. I think, Yeah, she's she's wonderful. 0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:18.680 She's the the artist that we we both caught it 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:21.960 the World Science Festival whild Back if I remember correctly. Um, 0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:25.680 and it's big into like don't call it stinky, like 0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:29.960