Role Of Smell Research Articles

User Preferences and Dislikes Concerning Sensory Stimulation in Shopping Center Resting Areas

Studies claim that shopping centers are considered a destination because they offer ambiance, experiences, and entertainment. With the rise in online shopping, shopping centers are no longer anchored by departmental stores but with their commercial facilities. Consistent with this change, more studies are needed to improve the interior quality of side facilities like entertainment and relaxing areas in shopping centers. This study is established to understand the sensory preferences and dislikes of a group of participants in shopping center resting areas. Consistent with this target, 200 participants took part in a questionnaire survey in Antalya, Turkey. The questionnaire consisted of 5 negative and 5 positive sensory qualities of space. These qualities were defined based on the five dimensions of a sensory space as established by Barbara Erwine. Participants were asked to list the negative qualities from most disturbing to least disturbing and then positive qualities from most satisfying to least satisfying. Data from the questionnaire were analyzed using the SPSS computer program. Results showed that smell was rated as the most influential sensory quality that disturbs or satisfies participants in shopping center resting areas. Also, according to participant responses, positive and negative feelings through touching materials and surfaces were the least disturbing/satisfying quality in resting areas. This study also suggests the need for further studies on the role of smell in changing peoples’ behavior in interior spaces and establishing design considerations that can improve the olfactory quality of spaces.

Varied Effects of COVID-19 Chemosensory Loss and Distortion on Appetite: Implications for Understanding Motives for Eating and Drinking.

A common symptom of COVID-19 is altered smell and taste. This qualitative study sought to further characterise this altered chemosensory perception and its effects on appetite for food and drink. Eighteen women and two men who had experienced chemosensory loss associated with COVID-19 participated in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed five major themes. These confirmed that all participants had experienced an altered sense of smell (anosmia, and less frequently parosmia and phantosmia) of variable duration. Loss of taste (ability to detect sweetness, saltiness, etc.) was less common. Participants experienced decreased, no change or increased appetite, with six participants reporting weight loss. Consistent with evidence linking diminished appetite with inflammation, for two participants, decreased appetite preceded anosmia onset. Anosmia reduced enjoyment of food and drink. Compensatory strategies included choosing salty, sweet and ‘spicy’ foods, and increased attention to food texture, and there was evidence that the postingestive rewarding effects of food intake were also important for maintaining appetite. Some participants mentioned increased alcohol intake, in part facilitated by reduced intensity of disliked flavours of alcoholic drinks. The narratives also underlined the value placed on the sociability and structuring of time that daily meals provide. This research adds to the record and analysis of lived experiences of altered chemosensory perception resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection, and it contributes insights concerning the role of smell and flavour in motivating and rewarding food ingestion.

The impact of COVID-19-related smell and taste disorders on a patient with bulimia nervosa: a case report

ABSTRACT A large number of patients with COVID-19 will suffer from long-term smell and taste disorders (STD). These STD symptoms could have a significant impact on patients with an eating disorder (ED). To highlight this issue, a case is presented of a patient with bulimia nervosa who experienced COVID-19-relate STD symptoms. Clinicians should reassess patients with an ED who suffer from COVID-19 with STD symptomatology and potentially redirect treatment. More research is needed on STD symptoms in patients with an ED to improve our knowledge on the role of smell and taste in disordered eating behaviors and improve treatment guidelines.

The Art of Immersion with Smell and Sensorial Theatre Language

In recent decades, the trend or the need for an experience of the effect of immersion into theatre events, other branches of art, tourism, everyday business and private life has become quite evident. We are used to audio-visual communication, which, from the Renaissance onwards, became the dominant channel for delivering messages, while other senses became less important. Until the middle of the 20th century, the role of smell in theatre practices was neglected, and more important senses took over the place of communication and staging. Rarely it was used as a direct prop, but always very carefully, because, according to many experts, it cannot be controlled like sound and light. However, we have forgotten that the smell, especially in combination with the sound, can have a strong emotional impact on a spectator. Like the other senses, the scent recreates the context of memories and can evoke an intense reliving of emotions and events. It can also provoke an evaluation or re-evaluation of the past, thereby affecting the perception of the present. Reality is perceived through the adaptation of sensory information, which is shaped and interpreted under the influence of past experiences. Experiences create expectations, and expectations create our subjective reality considering everyday life and theatrical performance. This relationship is especially noticeable in sensorial theatre. In the last decade, an effort has been made to bring scents and other tools of sensorial theatre back to the stage, just as – according to foreign sources – they were an important part of events in antiquity. In this way, the stage can be enriched with an additional dimension of communication and expression. The paper presents various methods and experiments on the use of scent and other tools of sensorial theatre, evaluating their phenomenology and effectiveness from the perspective of the performing arts and psychological science.

Can Foraging Hummingbirds Use Smell? A Test with the Amazilia Hummingbird Amazila amazilia

Smell plays an important role in the sensory ecology of birds. Although birds are considered to rely mainly on sight and hearing, use of smell in the reproduction, communication and foraging behaviours of many birds has been documented. However, there is very little information about the role of smell in foraging by nectarivorous birds. We tested the ability of the Amazilia Hummingbird Amazilia amazilia s. l. to use olfactory signals during foraging. Individuals were exposed to two feeders, one of which emitted a floral essence. Contrary to our expectations, no significant differences were found in the choice of feeders based on their odour. Our results suggest that neither male nor female Amazilia Hummingbirds use smell in the search for food but employ other senses, mainly sight. —Núñez, P., Méndez, M. & López-Rull, I. (2021). Can foraging hummingbirds use smell? A test with the Amazilia Hummingbird Amazila amazilia. Ardeola, 68: 433-444.

COVID 19-Induced Smell and Taste Impairments: Putative Impact on Physiology.

Smell and taste impairments are recognized as common symptoms in COVID 19 patients even in an asymptomatic phase. Indeed, depending on the country, in up to 85–90% of cases anosmia and dysgeusia are reported. We will review briefly the main mechanisms involved in the physiology of olfaction and taste focusing on receptors and transduction as well as the main neuroanatomical pathways. Then we will examine the current evidences, even if still fragmented and unsystematic, explaining the disturbances and mode of action of the virus at the level of the nasal and oral cavities. We will focus on its impact on the peripheral and central nervous system. Finally, considering the role of smell and taste in numerous physiological functions, especially in ingestive behavior, we will discuss the consequences on the physiology of the patients as well as management regarding food intake.

Olfactory response of Mahanarva spectabilis (Hemiptera: Cercopidae) to volatile organic compounds from forage grasses

Several herbivorous insects utilize plant chemical cues to identify hosts for feeding. The role of smell in host plant detection by Mahanarva spectabilis (Distant) remains largely unknown. In this study, assays were applied to assess M. spectabilis olfactory responses to forage grasses (Pennisetum purpureum cvs. Roxo Botucatu and Pioneiro; Panicum maximum cvs. Makueni and Tanzânia; Hyparrhenia rufa cv. Jaraguá; Melinis minutiflora; Cynodon dactylon cv. Tifton; Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandú; and Brachiaria decumbens cv. Basilisk). Bioassays were performed using a Y-olfactometer to evaluate the behavior of adult M. spectabilis to forage damaged and undamaged by insects. M. spectabilis preferred volatiles of undamaged Basilisk and Pioneiro. Repellent behavior by M. spectabilis to cospecifics was recorded for plant volatiles from damaged Marandú. The mixture of volatiles from undamaged forage grasses differed from that of forage grasses damaged by insects. Forage grasses showed a greater diversity of compounds after damage, including menthone, eucalyptol and camphor, which are compounds likely to cause loss of attractiveness or repellence. Our results demonstrate that M. spectabilis employs plant chemical cues in its choice of hosts. This fact may contribute to strategies of integrated management against this pest.

‘She just didn’t smell right!’ Odour and adoptive family life

Our recent studies of adoptive family life, in circumstances where parenting was very challenging or where the adoption had disrupted, revealed new and interesting findings (Selwyn and Meakings, 2015; Selwyn, Meakings and Wijedasa, 2015 ). One of the most fascinating and unexpected discoveries was the role of smell in adoptive parents’ and children’s behaviours. For some parents, the child’s odour was a barrier to intimacy. Parents were also aware of how specific smells seemed to trigger children’s early memories and trauma. In this article, we review briefly the literature on odour and consider the implications for social work practice.

The role of sucrose and sensory systems in fruit selection and consumption ofAteles geoffroyiin Yucatan, Mexico

Abstract:Our aim was to evaluate the role of sucrose and the role of smell, taste and touch in the selection and consumption of fruit in wild spider monkeys. We recorded the feeding bouts of 14 adults for 9 mo in the Otoch Ma’ax Yetel Kooh Reserve, Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico. For each of 2346 inspections on fruits of six species the consumption or rejection and the use of touch, smell and taste was recorded. Ten fruit samples (five ripe and five unripe) from each species were collected and the sucrose concentration was determined with a refractometer. As expected, sucrose concentrations were higher in ripe than unripe fruits. The difference in sucrose concentration between ripe and unripe fruits was positively associated with the proportion of inspections on ripe fruits and the proportion of consumed ripe fruits. Furthermore, the senses of touch and taste were used more often when fruits were ripe, whereas the sense of smell was used more often when fruits were unripe. The results suggest that sensory cues and sucrose concentration play important roles in fruit selection in spider monkeys.

Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell. By Jonathan Reinarz (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2014) 296 pp. $90.00 cloth $25.00 paper

Reinarz’s Past Scents aims to offer a “comprehensive and coherent introduction to the history of smell” (1), a subject usually defined by its ephemerality, diffusiveness, and visceral impact rather than its cultural or historical significance. Its challenge to the traditional history of olfaction more than hits the mark, presenting not only a rich overview of the cultural history of olfaction but also a compelling synthesis of historiographical approaches to this topic and a sharp summary of the state of the field. Reinarz draws extensively from recent work while also expanding its purview to include the insights of anthropologists, literary scholars, classicists, art historians, and sociologists, as well as insights from the history of medicine. The strength of the book lies in its interdisciplinary and transtemporal approach; that Reinarz can achieve such breadth without sacrificing the variances inherent in this topic is a real achievement. The result is a comprehensive, coherent, and accessible introduction to the subject that deserves a wide audience.Aligning himself with the argument that the senses are cultural phenomena, Reinarz organizes the book into six chapters that explore the social ramifications of past definitions of the science of smell. To ask who or what smelled in the past, as Reinarz says, is never a neutral question: As the famous nineteenth-century perfumer Edward Rimmel put it, “The history of perfume, in some manner, is the history of civilization” (1). Reinarz’s book seizes on the associative links embedded in such a claim in order to undo its logic. To understand the subject and objects of smell in the past is to grapple with the cultural history of “civilizations,” including those that have been explicitly excluded from such constructions. Among other things, Reinarz traces the use of scents in shaping cultural meanings of religion, luxury, race, gender, class, and a growing sense of urban spheres.After a useful overview of various medical theories of olfaction in the introduction, the first chapter examines smell’s role in religion, focusing on the fourth century c.e. (when early Christians first embraced ancient links between fragrance and worshipping the divine); the second chapter, about “fragrant lucre” and the perfume trade, delves more deeply into how liturgical practices inspired a burgeoning perfume trade in medieval and early modern Europe. Chapter 2 surveys how scent ingredients emerged as lucrative objects of exchange, in part because of a growing belief in their medicinal efficacy. How one smelled was linked to one’s health.The next three chapters demonstrate, however, that medicinal constructions of bodily smell often provided a ready rationale for social exclusion under the aegis of public health. Reinarz offers three cogent case studies about (1) the role of smell in constructing a “foul” and “fragrant” other; (2) the role of olfaction in shaping histories of racial difference (in medieval Europe as well as in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America) and gender (vis-à-vis trenchant and misogynist constructions of the smell of women’s bodies in both European medical histories and gendered histories of the production and consumption of perfume); and (3) the role of class (in charting the rise of deodorization as a marker during the nineteenth century). In the final chapter, Reinarz shifts gears, examining the spatial ramifications of such olfactory histories on urban life. The smells of the city reflect its changing composition, as well as the structural challenges that it faced due to population density. For this reason, scholars are now using smells to construct new kinds of “maps” of urban space, pushing against a teleology of civilization aligned with deodorization.This book suggests that engagement with the cultural work of smell both in the past and in the present can be richly rewarding. Reinarz’s timely survey of historical perspectives on smell will (hopefully) inspire further research that will move us beyond simple binaries of fragrant/foul and self/other toward more redolent possibilities.

Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture by James McHugh (review)

Reviewed by: Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture by James McHugh C. Pierce Salguero James McHugh. Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xix + 322 pp. $35.00 (978-0-19-991632-0). Historian of South Asian religion James McHugh has written a detailed exploration of smells, aromatics, and perfumes in ancient and medieval India that deserves our attention. The author refers to his book as a “primer and a reference book” (p. 7); however, the reader who spends some time with it is sure to discover that he has produced something much more. Creative and well written, the work explores a huge selection of literature (including the Vedas, epics, philosophical works, Buddhist and Jain writings, perfumery treatises, lexicons, medical texts, and more). Each chapter opens up multiple facets of the physiology, aesthetics, [End Page 282] social function, and economics of smell, while the introduction outlines how this research connects with recent trends in the history of the body, the senses, and material culture. Because of the richness of his sources and the breadth of his scope, historians of religion, literature, transnational exchange, technology, and medicine will equally benefit from reading McHugh. The historian of medicine who wishes to take the author at his word and treat the book as a reference work will readily find many useful nuggets here. One can, for instance, read an introduction to the Indian understanding of the mechanics of olfaction on pages 25 to 29. Pages 72 to 81 discuss and partially translate sections from the Carakasaṃhitā (third century BCE to fifth century CE) and Suśrutasaṃhitā (ca. 500 CE) on the role of smell in the prognosis of death and in the diagnosis of demonic pediatric disease. Also relevant is the chapter on sandalwood, where McHugh explores the literary references to, the properties of, and the uses of a range of substances known as candana (pp. 182–89). And one can consult the index for more information about individual aromatic medicines that appear ubiquitously throughout the book. The author’s characterization of his own work notwithstanding, however, it is not as a reference volume that Sandalwood and Carrion will be most useful to scholars in our field, and it is not by flipping to specific pages that we will most enjoy it as readers. Pardon the expression, but this book simply begs us to stop and smell the roses as we make our way through it. Whatever your entry point might be, you cannot read more than a page or two before you find yourself immersed in a fascinating, textured description of an alternative universe in which medicine is intimately intertwined with religion, trade, aesthetics, and sensual experience. For example, you may have come to chapter 7 because you were interested in looking up a synonym for a commonly traded aromatic medicine (pp. 173–74). But on the surrounding pages you will read about the pervasive ethnic and geographic stereotypes that shrouded aromatics in an exotic mystique (pp. 171–77), narratives of lavish tribute missions from the Mahābhārata and other sources (pp. 166–71), and literary depictions of the merchants and perfumers of an idealized medieval city (pp. 162–66). Read on, and in the next chapter you will learn how aromatics were evaluated by merchants (pp. 189–95) as well as how they were faked (pp. 195–98). As you continue still further, do not be surprised if you learn how that same aromatic substance was used in temple construction or in adorning the gods in Hindu ritual, how it was spoken of in the Kāmasūtra or in a pun or a riddle, or what role it played in the formula for the famous perfumes “Moon Juice” and “Uproar.” Though you may initially have been interested in simply finding a synonym, soon you realize you have happily lost yourself in McHugh’s guided tour of the vivid Indian “smellscape.” Will some historians of medicine complain that the book overly prioritizes religious perspectives? That it spends too little time on the medical matters that concern us most? Perhaps. For this reviewer, however, the appeal of the...

Von Caipirinhas und zwei Schweinskoteletts - Variationen zum "White Hat Syndrome" des Abschieds

Three case studies exemplify the role of smell and its associations with memories, paramount life episodes and critical decisions. Specific food and drinks resp. their fragrances may be of particular importance in multimorbid and terminally ill patients. A "white hat round" by a particularly trained hospital cook is proposed.

Why do children get bitten in the face?

The majority of dog bite accidents happen at home and involve children under the age of 7 (Kahn et al, 2003) and a familiar dog. The prevalence of bites in...

The Sweet Sound of Sanctity

ABSTRACTSensory studies of medieval devotion overwhelmingly prioritize the role of smell in the perception of sainthood—the ubiquitous “odor of sanctity”—despite evidence that both scent and sound shared a prominent association in Christian worship and spirituality. Prayers and hymns, for example, were perceived to rise heavenward like the smoke of incense, while medieval visionaries imagined the saints in heaven as inhabiting a fragrant and musical realm. This article examines the interplay of sound and scent in the medieval ideal of sanctity through a case study of hagiographic texts and music dating from the eighth to twelfth centuries for the Frankish martyr, St Lambert of Liège. By studying the miracle of Lambert's posthumous singing from the perspectives of sensory symbolism, perception, and liminality, we can better understand the synthesis of sound with scent in the promotion of sanctity and in the broader representation of transcendence.

To Chicago and Back: Aleko Konstantinov, Rose Oil, and the Smell of Modernity

In 1893 Aleko Konstantinov undertook a momentous journey to the Chicago World's Fair. Mary Neuburger explores the broader implications of this journey and its consequences for the Bulgarian encounter with the west and modernity, drawing special attention to the issue of smell. As chronicled inTo Chicago and Back, written after his return, Konstantinov discovers both the New World and the quintessence of his own nation on the famous Midway Plaisance, where he meets the prototype for Bulgaria's greatest literary anti-hero—the indomitable Baĭ Gano. InBaĭ Gano—a fictional travelogue about a Bulgarian in Europe—as inTo Chicago and Back, Konstantinov explores the theme of Bulgarian backwardness vis-à-vis a more developed (albeit imperfect) Europe and United States. As Baĭ Gano, a bumbling and stinky rose oil merchant, travels throughout “civilized“ Europe, olfactory contrasts and ironies emerge, highlighting the role of smell in evolving Bulgarian (and European) notions of modernity and “otherness.“