smell

How Cells in the Nose Detect Odors
11/14/2012 - 18:54

The human nose has millions of olfactory neurons grouped into hundreds of different neuron types.  Researchers have identified a large multi-protein complex in olfactory neurons, called MMB/dREAM, that plays a major role in selecting the carbon dioxide receptors to be expressed in appropriate neurons.

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The Knowing Nose: Chemosignals Communicate Human Emotions
11/05/2012 - 14:02

Many animal species transmit information via chemical signals, but the extent to which these chemosignals play a role in human communication is unclear. In a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researcher Gün Semin and colleagues from Utrecht University in the Netherlands investigate whether we humans might actually be able to communicate our emotional states to each other through chemical signals.

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Animals learn to fine-tune their sniffs
10/30/2012 - 17:22

Animals use their noses to focus their sense of smell, much the same way that humans focus their eyes, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

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New Research Identifies Association between Rare Neuromuscular Disorder and Loss of Smell
10/18/2012 - 12:10

Changes in the ability to smell and taste can be caused by a simple cold or upper respiratory tract infection, but they may also be among the first signs of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Now, new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania  has revealed an association between an impaired sense of smell and myasthenia gravis (MG), a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease characterized by fluctuating fatigue and muscle weakness. The findings are published in the latest edition of PLOS ONE.

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'Psychopaths' have an impaired sense of smell
09/20/2012 - 10:16

People with psychopathic tendencies have an impaired sense of smell, which points to inefficient processing in the front part of the brain. These findings by Mehmet Mahmut and Richard Stevenson, from Macquarie University in Australia, are published online in Springer's journal Chemosensory Perception.

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The Nose Knows: Gene Therapy Restores Sense Of Smell In Mice
09/10/2012 - 13:37

A team of scientists from Johns Hopkins and other institutions report that restoring tiny, hair-like structures to defective cells in the olfactory system of mice is enough to restore a lost sense of smell. The results of the experiments were published online this week in Nature Medicine, and are believed to represent the first successful application of gene therapy to restore this function in live mammals.

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