deep cleaning of the dust, accumulated buttons, pennies, and pine needles that hid beneath it, out of reach of the vacuum nozzle.
Yes, the wing chair was a sponge for smells. My sensitive nose always knew who'd sat in it the last time we'd had company based on hints left by perfume or shampoo, or just the odor that comes off a person's skin, as unique as a fingerprint. Human odor is more pungent in times of stress or excitement. The scent was always more readily detected if it had been warm in the room and there'd been an argument.
It didn't make sense that the organ that made such subtle distinctions and attached even more subtle emotional messages and responses should be regarded as inferior to the same organ of a species that was led by the nose in direct and obvious ways. A wine is judged by its complexity. Why not a sense? Dogs are glibly pronounced superior in all aspects of smelling. True, a canine's world is saturated in smells, and a dog lifts its nose to catch scents from miles away. A dog is able to distinguish the smell of its owner from that of a stranger and to tell other dogs apart. We're so impressed by such seemingly uncanny talents that we all but ignore our own smell acuity. Human olfaction isn't inferior to dogs' but different, just as humans differ in having bigger and more complicated brains. As the human brain evolved, its older parts received upgrades, abilities made possible by the intricate wiring of the newest features.
The retronasal passage, located behind the mouth, allows all the intermingled aromas of one's surroundings, including some released through chewing, to slip up to the brain by the back way. To neurobiologist Gordon Shepherd, this suggests that the central brain contributes more to smell function than the peripheral parts do, which in turn explains why, in his view, humans actually have an excellent sense of smell in spite of our small noses and declining number of smell genes. The primary sense seems to have insinuated itself ever more securely into the psyche via those complex neuronal structures of the neocortex. Even rats have been shown to smell just fine after 80 percent of the (peripheral) olfactory system is removed.
Shepherd thinks that our active smell genes are becoming more focused on the specialized olfactory needs of a highly evolved species. It's not the overall gene count that matters; it's what each gene does. Smell scientist Stuart Firestein discovered that one human olfactory gene performs the work of three or four mouse olfactory genes.
That humans smell quite well is more than just a fun fact to toss around over lunch in the lab cafeteria. Take a recent contest dreamed up by psychologists at the University of California at Berkeley: canine smellers and college undergraduates both tracked a trail of chocolate on all fours. True, the dogs outperformed the kids by a factor of four. But the students surprised the scientists by how few mistakes they made. With their noses pressed to the ground, as dogs' usually are, the students were able to smell the relatively big, heavy odor molecules that escape detection when one is standing upright.
Moreover, what the human nose lacks in raw olfactory firepower, it more than makes up for, Shepherd argued, in finesse. This is why humans may have a better sense of smell than animals that have many times keener noses—better for what humans enjoy doing, which is not wading into mosquito-infested marshes to grab a dead mallard but rather shooting mallards and then handing them off to a good cook to create a meal that would be wasted on a golden retriever.
That women score higher than men on tests of smell acuity seems to contradict the finding that all people are equal when it comes to smell. But the nurture side of the nature-nurture polarity is expanding its territory. Biologists now count prenatal influences as nurture, not nature. This is important. They want to be absolutely precise when determining if a given biological
Yes, the wing chair was a sponge for smells. My sensitive nose always knew who'd sat in it the last time we'd had company based on hints left by perfume or shampoo, or just the odor that comes off a person's skin, as unique as a fingerprint. Human odor is more pungent in times of stress or excitement. The scent was always more readily detected if it had been warm in the room and there'd been an argument.
It didn't make sense that the organ that made such subtle distinctions and attached even more subtle emotional messages and responses should be regarded as inferior to the same organ of a species that was led by the nose in direct and obvious ways. A wine is judged by its complexity. Why not a sense? Dogs are glibly pronounced superior in all aspects of smelling. True, a canine's world is saturated in smells, and a dog lifts its nose to catch scents from miles away. A dog is able to distinguish the smell of its owner from that of a stranger and to tell other dogs apart. We're so impressed by such seemingly uncanny talents that we all but ignore our own smell acuity. Human olfaction isn't inferior to dogs' but different, just as humans differ in having bigger and more complicated brains. As the human brain evolved, its older parts received upgrades, abilities made possible by the intricate wiring of the newest features.
The retronasal passage, located behind the mouth, allows all the intermingled aromas of one's surroundings, including some released through chewing, to slip up to the brain by the back way. To neurobiologist Gordon Shepherd, this suggests that the central brain contributes more to smell function than the peripheral parts do, which in turn explains why, in his view, humans actually have an excellent sense of smell in spite of our small noses and declining number of smell genes. The primary sense seems to have insinuated itself ever more securely into the psyche via those complex neuronal structures of the neocortex. Even rats have been shown to smell just fine after 80 percent of the (peripheral) olfactory system is removed.
Shepherd thinks that our active smell genes are becoming more focused on the specialized olfactory needs of a highly evolved species. It's not the overall gene count that matters; it's what each gene does. Smell scientist Stuart Firestein discovered that one human olfactory gene performs the work of three or four mouse olfactory genes.
That humans smell quite well is more than just a fun fact to toss around over lunch in the lab cafeteria. Take a recent contest dreamed up by psychologists at the University of California at Berkeley: canine smellers and college undergraduates both tracked a trail of chocolate on all fours. True, the dogs outperformed the kids by a factor of four. But the students surprised the scientists by how few mistakes they made. With their noses pressed to the ground, as dogs' usually are, the students were able to smell the relatively big, heavy odor molecules that escape detection when one is standing upright.
Moreover, what the human nose lacks in raw olfactory firepower, it more than makes up for, Shepherd argued, in finesse. This is why humans may have a better sense of smell than animals that have many times keener noses—better for what humans enjoy doing, which is not wading into mosquito-infested marshes to grab a dead mallard but rather shooting mallards and then handing them off to a good cook to create a meal that would be wasted on a golden retriever.
That women score higher than men on tests of smell acuity seems to contradict the finding that all people are equal when it comes to smell. But the nurture side of the nature-nurture polarity is expanding its territory. Biologists now count prenatal influences as nurture, not nature. This is important. They want to be absolutely precise when determining if a given biological
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