Bloodhound

Despite the various ways smell
protects us, humans often count
it as one of the senses they could
do without. In a recent study by
McCann Worldgroup, “53 percent of
those aged 16-22 and 48 percent of
those aged 23-30 would give up their
own sense of smell if it meant they
could keep an item of technology.”
For me, too, it was a sense I thought
I could do without—until I lost it.
The more I researched anosmia—the
medical term for my condition—the
more questions I had. Smell is
strongly tied to memory, so did this
mean that the memories I would
make as an anosmic would be
more difficult to recall years later?
Would I ever fall in love again if I
couldn’t physically smell another’s
scent, the chemicals intimately
communicated by the human body?
Would I have trouble bonding with
my own child one day? Would I lose
my connection to myself if I no
longer was acquainted with my own
body odor? And why did a minor
concussion entirely knock out my
ability to smell?
y own research suggests
that likely my loss of smell
was caused by my brain bouncing
against the front of my skull when
it hit the ground, severing some 400
hair like olfactory receptors that bind
odor molecules at the back of the
nasal cavity, which pass through a
honeycomb-like cribriform plate, and
carry signals to the olfactory bulb
in the brain. When the nerves are
damaged, they are no longer able to
send signals to the olfactory bulb,
which connects to the amygdala,
interpreting and mapping up to one
trillion different odors.
Wafts of fruity aromas form a
soft blue cloud over one’s face
People can live without their sense
of smell, so there have been fewer
resources devoted to the research
on the topic. But according to the
researchers at the Monell Center in
Philadelphia, almost more than 6.3
million Americans are living without
their sense of smell. Founded in
1968 as the center for taste and
smell research, the institution is
attempting to learn more about our
sense and its relation to quality of
life and overall wellbeing.
In early 2014, the center began A
Sense of Hope which is a three-year
awareness and research campaign
for anosmia. If some odor input to
the brain ceases, it can be assumed
that behavioral or even an emotional
changes might occur.
19 seeing smell