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The Science of Scent

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Are YOU interested in the science behind what we enjoy?

A little. Why not?
15% 3
Yes, let's talk about this! Understanding the process can only add to perfume appreciation.
78% 15
No. Scent is mysterious and picking apart the "how" takes away from the magic.
5% 1
Total Votes: 19
The Science of Scent 10 years ago
It occurs to me that while we all obviously enjoy perfumes, so much of how we smell remains obscure. Vibrating molecules, yes... but once you get beyond the basics it gets rather tricky, especially once we get past initial sensory mechanics into how the brain actually absorbs and accesses this olfactory info.

I wanted to start a thread for posting information and articles not only about scientific discoveries regarding smell but the social and personal implications of them. Here's one I was reading earlier today after an article popped up about scent sensitivity being an early symptom of Alzheimer's... while the peanut butter test is fascinating, this article is broader, well sourced and though it does become a little dry, it's well worth the read.

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo /37603/title/Smell-and-the-Degenerating-Brain
TL;DR version: olfactory dysfunction is an early sign of many neurological disorders.

The one request I make to those replying with links to share is to please make sure any articles you link have reasonable sources. Casual speculation is well and good but documentation and peer review separates a study from tin foil hat hypotheses. Wink
10 years ago
There is a book "The Scent of Desire: Discovering our Enigmatic Sense of Smell" by Rachel Herz. She is a research psychologist who studied emotion, perception-cognition and the sense of smell. Rachel Herz wrote another book "That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion". (Last week I decided to start with the "Disgust Lessons".)
10 years ago
Part of me doesn't care what the ingredients are, I just want to enjoy and not pick apart. Except, of course, to help me identify similar perfumes that I might like, or more importantly ones I should avoid to protect my sinuses. Laughing

The other part of me is afraid to find out in detail what makes up these aroma-chemical soups.
10 years ago
I like to pick apart fragrances, except my favorite ones.

Interested in the science too.
10 years ago
Florette that video looks great, at least from what I have watched so far. I keep trying to make time for it and keep getting distracted!

Another thought: how easy is it, if at all possible, to retro-- what is it called when you craft something backwards? I'm drawing a blank on the word, but to be able to give a chemist a sample of an unknown, irreplacable perfume and have them recreate it would be mindblowing. Mindblowing but bittersweet... it would open up too many avenues for plagiarism. But think of the applications! Artificial ouds as good as first grade genuine aoud, cruelty free animalics, perhaps even the ability to revive plants that have not been smelled in a generation.
10 years ago
Yes! Thank you. Wink
10 years ago
Well, they have tried. Not as easy as scratch-n-sniff, but getting there. Back in the 80's there was the aroma disc, kind of like an electronic diffuser but it never took off. Then there's the Scentscape and i-Aroma that are digitally controlled. Funky stuff.
10 years ago
No, it makes sense. Your idea would mix scents like a printer would mix inks to make images. Unfortunately printers are tricky little things but at least when they act up it becomes quite obvious... with scent it would be a lot less detectable, it'd be like suspecting you had a bad batch.
Not to mention that colour printers still only need four inks... imagine how many various perfume notes you would need for a fragrance "printer!"
Still, it's a fun idea.
Great articles! 10 years ago
I voted for knowing!

I have seen lack of smell sensitivity from working in a hospice setting. My personal experience with these patients does correlate with what is said about the aging brain, dementia and scent sensitivity loss. It's sad really.

One of the last senses to go is hearing for the average person...at least music can be enjoyed.
10 years ago
I wonder if in that hospital setting a fraction of that loss is habituation to the ammonia and cleaning products also dulling other scent sensitivity? Do you find yourself less or more sensitive to perfume after a busy week?

There was a thread on Fragrantica where a doctor was asking which fragrance would offend his patients the least, many people advised him that no perfume at all would be preferable. Poor guy, though it comes with the territory. When I did volunteer work at a vet shelter the animals didn't like it either, I stopped wearing perfume the whole time I was with them.
Conversely when I was doing bloods from long term care in hospitals I was surprised, comments from patients were all very positive. Being cooped up sick without fine fragrance they always noticed the wisps of what I had left over. Aged care homes are more relaxed, one lady I visited had a big glass flacon of Shalimar in prime place on her counter, sun damage be damned. Smile
The Hospital! 10 years ago
After a long week I find myself more sensitized and craving of beautiful scents.

It's not the disinfectants that actually bother me the most, it's the various smell of disease like infected purulent cancer sores, necrosis on people still living, etc etc etc. That can be nauseatingly overwhelming depending on how bad it is. Maybe that is why I have a dislike of too strong animalics. I don't want to be reminded of other people's flesh when I apply perfume to myself.

And yes I notice that when I am in the hospice ward per se, the patients actually are happy to smell me, so are most of the other nurses (except one who has allergies to roses as she says, but it's not allergies she just doesn't like them.)

So when I'm in hospice, I feel like the light fresh scents are therapeutic to the patients. And in hospice where I am there is not a legal requirement to be scent free, the patients can also wear whatever perfume or cologne they feel like. So that is nice.

I was a vet tech for 18 years before I was a human nurse. And you can never tell what will set off a terrified cat or dog...or monkey. And often they don't mind until you get up close to restrain them for blood draws and the like. Then they are just trying to get away and it can become unmanageable. I stopped wearing perfume when I worked at the vet for that reason.

Sometimes a dog or cat would lick my arm because they liked the scent, but then the same scent could negatively affect another pet. So I just stopped.

Oh for a doctor in an office I would definitely not wear anything. You have such a wide variety of people there many with asthma and heart/lung problems, breathing is such a major issue that it isn't worth the potential trouble, especially if someone sues you saying that you caused their asthma attack.
10 years ago
I agree, scent is definitely therapeutic, just like visits from social dogs and family members it reconnects patients to the world and themselves. I think being one of the dog visitation escorts would be a lovely job, though I imagine my cats would not be impressed with me when I arrived home! Yup, crazy cat lady right here.

As I spent time in hospital when I was young my doctor said it was fine for me to use my own pillow from home... it was unbelievably comforting and I'll never forget the difference it made. To this day I find the rather manky smell of my own pillow quite comforting, the natural hair oil/residue of perfume/drooled all over scent! I find it fascinating, some perfume appreciators are quite offended by natural smells, some appreciate them more. The list here about offensive smells is quite enlightening, my own dreaded ones are heavy chemicals like bleach and chlorine... while generally distasteful, bodily waste is nowhere near as nasty to me.

Recently I have started wearing calm, soft perfumes to bed (previously I was too sensitive and perfumes would just keep me up all night) but when I'm not feeling well the best smell is always "home", or in my case living in a sharehouse with friends, "bedroom".
There's a product called "Feliway" you plug into the wall like a perfume diffuser but it contains cat pheromones, many owners find it calms and reassures their pets and even use it as a medical treatment the way humans have anti-depressants. A friend of mine works in a sex shop and for a while pheromone perfumes were a big seller; I should do some research to see if they actually smell like anything or are remotely effective. But I digress.

While we have aromatherapy most people seem to consider it even less effective than, say, chiropractors! Surely olfaction is the most overlooked sense.
And yes, that was the reason I put regarding the doctor's thread. There was another post at the same time about perfume causing some people anaphylactic shock... I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Just too much of a risk for a GP or nurse.
10 years ago
"Biologists tracking jaguars in the Guatemalan jungle might smell nice but it's all in the name of science, with researchers finding the Calvin Klein cologne Obsession for Men attracts big cats."

www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/10/us-jaguars- calvinklein-idUSTRE6584WV20100610

Old but entertaining.
If Obsession attracts jaguars, what perfume attracts a cougar? Laughing
10 years ago
Scarletting:
If Obsession attracts jaguars, what perfume attracts a cougar? Laughing

I'm gonna say . . . anything? Laughing

Nah, just kidding. Totally, totally kidding, cougars. Please, no angry letters. Smile Any woman who disparages cougars is just jealous that she isn't hot enough in her middle age to attract younger men.
10 years ago
"The 'smelling screen' that was recently presented at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2013 conference in Orlando, Florida can produce odours that appear to emanate from specific areas of the screen."

www.gizmag.com/smell-screen-localized-virtual- odor/26884
10 years ago
10 years ago
Scarletting:
Another thought: how easy is it, if at all possible, to retro-- what is it called when you craft something backwards? I'm drawing a blank on the word, but to be able to give a chemist a sample of an unknown, irreplaceable perfume and have them recreate it would be mindblowing.

The matching of a perfume or scent composition is, to some extent, possible. I recently got my hands on Perfumery, Practice and Principles by Calkin & Jellinek, which, amongst other subjects, elaborates on the topic.

Synopsis:
The gas chromatography (GC) separates a blend into most volatile, less volatile and most tenacious components. Materials can be detected that represent less than 0.01% of the total mixture and in the hands of a skillful operator, the perfume can be nearly completely separated into its individual components.
The presence of other more 'difficult' naturals may be suggested by the mass spectrometer (MS) identification. The GC machine can be connected to a MS and a computer, which are able to give a positive identification of the various components. In effect the perfumer can be given a list of all identified materials, often comprising some 95% of the compound, together with their approximate percentages.

However, to convert all this information into the form of a perfume formula requires considerable experience on the part of the GC analyst and perfumer. A perfume may, if sufficiently simple in structure, be reconstructed quite accurately in this way with little recourse to the human nose. But more often than not, even a duplication that closely follows the analysis of the original will require some additional work by the perfumer. Many natural materials are difficult to detect when present in trace amounts, yet in combination they can add enormously to the richness of the perfume. Such materials can only be found by analytical smelling of the original perfume.
Consequently, the application of the GC/MS-plus-perfumer analyses yields approximate matches.
10 years ago
Raiders of the Lost Scent has a great article on the practical application of GCMS.

raidersofthelostscent.blogspot.it/2014/04/gcms -amazone-edt-hermes-1974.html
10 years ago
www.newscientist.com/article/dn25865-skins-abi lity-to-smell-seems-to-help-it-heal-itself.htm l

"They found that Sandalore – a synthetic sandalwood oil used in aromatherapy, perfumes and skin care products – bound to an olfactory receptor in skin called OR2AT4. Rather than sending a message to the brain, as nose receptors do, the receptor triggered cells to divide and migrate, important processes in repairing damaged skin."
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