Neuroscience
We share more in common with mice than a penchant for cheese, we also like the same kinds of smells. This suggests that our nasal preferences, even for biologically insignificant smells, are somewhat hard-wired or predetermined, and not entirely learned.
Nathalie Mandairon and colleagues asked thirty participants to rate their preference for a range of odours including geraniol, which has a floral smell, and guaiacol, which has a smoky whiff about it. The odours that the participants said they favoured, such as geraniol, tended to be the same ones that thirty mice spent the most amount of time sniffing, whereas the odours the humans liked least, such as guaiacol, tended to be the ones the mice were least interested in.
Importantly, the smells used in the study were varied and had no apparent biological significance. For example, it wasn't just the case that humans and mice both disliked smells that signalled rotten food or that signalled danger.
"Even if pleasantness is the result of culture, life experience and learning," the researchers said, "the present interspecies comparison shows that there is an initial part of the percept which is innate and engraved in the odourant structure."
Just what it is about the chemical structure of some substances that makes them smell pleasant to mice and humans remains to be discovered. "Taken as a whole, these results substantially affect our view of olfactory [smell-based] hedonic perception and open up new avenues for the understanding of its neural mechanisms," the researchers concluded. "They also suggest that odour exploration behaviour in mice may be used to predict human olfactory preferences."
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Nathalie Mandairon, Johan Poncelet, Moustafa Bensafi, Anne Didier (2009). Humans and Mice Express Similar Olfactory Preferences PLoS ONE, 4 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004209
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Mice and humans like the same smells
We share more in common with mice than a penchant for cheese, we also like the same kinds of smells. This suggests that our nasal preferences, even for biologically insignificant smells, are somewhat hard-wired or predetermined, and not entirely learned.Nathalie Mandairon and colleagues asked thirty participants to rate their preference for a range of odours including geraniol, which has a floral smell, and guaiacol, which has a smoky whiff about it. The odours that the participants said they favoured, such as geraniol, tended to be the same ones that thirty mice spent the most amount of time sniffing, whereas the odours the humans liked least, such as guaiacol, tended to be the ones the mice were least interested in.
Importantly, the smells used in the study were varied and had no apparent biological significance. For example, it wasn't just the case that humans and mice both disliked smells that signalled rotten food or that signalled danger.
"Even if pleasantness is the result of culture, life experience and learning," the researchers said, "the present interspecies comparison shows that there is an initial part of the percept which is innate and engraved in the odourant structure."
Just what it is about the chemical structure of some substances that makes them smell pleasant to mice and humans remains to be discovered. "Taken as a whole, these results substantially affect our view of olfactory [smell-based] hedonic perception and open up new avenues for the understanding of its neural mechanisms," the researchers concluded. "They also suggest that odour exploration behaviour in mice may be used to predict human olfactory preferences."
_________________________________
Nathalie Mandairon, Johan Poncelet, Moustafa Bensafi, Anne Didier (2009). Humans and Mice Express Similar Olfactory Preferences PLoS ONE, 4 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004209Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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"What does coffee smell like?" "What about lemon?" These questions are tricky for English speakers to answer because we tend to describe smells by referring to their typical source. So, an aroma that smells like coffee is described as, well, smelling...
- Competition Between Nostrils
Show one image exclusively to one eye and a different image exclusively to the other eye and rather than experiencing a merging of the images, an observer's percept will flit backwards and forwards randomly and endlessly between the two. This "binocular...
- Humans Can Track Scents Like A Dog
Bloodhounds are unlikely to be out of work just yet, but researchers have found humans can track a scent on the ground in the same way that dogs do. While humans are traditionally considered to have a poor sense of smell compared with many of their mammalian...
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"However, we'll still take plenty of food and opioid agonists!" Unlike mice with the dopamine D2 receptor "knocked out," D1 receptor-deficient mice will no longer self-administer cocaine: Caine SB, Thomsen M, Gabriel KI, Berkowitz JS, Gold LH, Koob...
- Dementia And The Sniff Magnitude Test
From today's New York Times: Sniff Test May Signal Disorders’ Early Stages By ELIZABETH SVOBODA Published: August 14, 2007 [snip] The Sniff Magnitude Test, developed with the aid of a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, consists...