Book Review: The Remarkable Return of the Most Underappreciated Sense

As the coronavirus spread around the world in early 2020, people began reporting a loss of their sense of smell. Public health agencies focused on tracking the spread of the virus based on more traditional symptoms of respiratory illness, such as cough and fever, so the loss of smell was initially seen as more of an oddity than an important signal. It was treated like an anecdote. But olfactory researcher Jonas Olofsson knew better: “When I repeated, almost parrot-like, to journalists that readers and listeners who suddenly lost their sense of smell should be isolated immediately, I “I would like to think that I contributed to preserving it,” he wrote. His new book about the central role of smell in our lives.

Olofsson is used to championing the importance of smell, something many people take for granted. As evidence, he points to a survey that asked Americans to choose between their sense of smell and their pinky toe. Half chose toes. In a 2021 follow-up survey, only 15 percent of respondents remained team conscious, but Olofsson said we still don’t fully understand or appreciate the “special intelligence of the nose.” claim.

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The sense of smell is not always superior to the five senses. In the last century, smell was essential to everything from spirituality to morality to medicine. Burnt offerings floated into the heavens to reach the gods, medieval demons were thought to emit the odor of flatulence, and doctors used the smell for both diagnosis and treatment. In today’s screen-saturated society, which relies on sight and hearing, the sense of smell may seem like an evolutionary relic. However, even though our sense of smell is primitive, it is not primitive.

Olofsson argues that our olfactory brain does not passively respond to odor molecules on its own, but works with other brain regions to interpret odors. “The sense of smell doesn’t work in isolation, but it’s smarter than that. It receives all the cues in the environment and uses all its accumulated knowledge to evaluate them,” he says. Masu.

Using this “cognitive perspective” on olfaction, Olofsson guides the reader through the current state of smell, while exploring the complex pheromone debate, the “swamp” of research on aromatherapy, electronic noses, and other digital scent technologies. ”, and discusses his own successes with scent. Based brain training. His work reveals that this ancient and humble ability holds deep untapped potential to enrich our lives.