The power of the sense of smell | Donald Wilson | TEDxLeuvenSalon

Donald Wilson is a research professor at the Departments of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Physiology and Neuroscience, and a Senior Research Scientist at the Emotional Brain Institute
Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research. His current research focuses on how the mammalian brain processes and remembers information. As a model system he and his team focus on rodent (rat and mice) discrimination and memory for odors.

The evolutionarily oldest sense is the ability to detect and discriminate chemicals around you. Some of those chemicals are small and float in the air and we call those smells. The chemicals come from plants and animals and bacteria and elsewhere, and can provide information about what to eat, what to avoid so as not to be eaten, and with whom to mate. How do we smell? How does our brain change chemicals inhaled up our nose into brie, chardonnay or dirty diaper? The task is made more complex by the fact that most smells we experience are not due to a single type of molecule, but are rather the result of complex mixtures of many types of molecules that our brain merges into a single percept, much like the merging of blue and yellow pigments make green. Wilson will describe how the brain performs the remarkable feat of creating the aroma of coffee and how memory plays an important role in this process.

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[lordmarcusbagwell]

While I was growing up, my mother started developing wet macular degeneration in both of her eyes. I would blindfold myself. And count steps from the living room to the kitchen and to the other rooms of the house. I learned to pour liquid into cups by sound, I would use my sense of smell to determine who people were. And how to use my fingers to see, just so I could teach my mom. My dad and my sister thought I was crazy in the beginning because they didn't understand what mom was about to go through. But for some reason, I did. It will be 3 weeks ago tomorrow we lost my mom. She passed away peacefully at 83. The reason I tell the story is because before the mortician took her away, I leaned down and I smelled her hair. I knew the smell of her hair, every time I catch a smell of her shampoo, I would think of her. Not her death but her. The amazing woman she was.

It's the power of scent that is a very primal very animalistic sense. I believe it is something that is instilled in us before we are born because we are animals.

[Eludinium]

Hello, I’ve got hyperosmia, basically I can smell everything, I can smell who’s watering their garden, I can smell who’s been in my house, I can smell when a bulb is about to blow, sometimes I can even smell what illness someone has, I’ve noticed COPD has a very distinct smell.

[crrottz]

So much science . But very clearly described ..

[orchadiasolutions]

What a great talk.  Very well explained and will recommend to my perfume training students.

[plymouthlad]

I have no sense of smell due to having Kallmann syndrome.

There is a whole world of sensation I miss out with not being able to smell but I tend not to notice it now. Often it is other people who remind me that I can not smell.

[SaveManWoman]

Was waiting on how to instead of why. But power was on his brain side rather than heart and nose. 👃

[davwht]

Humans live in a sensory depravated. Environment. In concrete and steel cities. Compared to the glorious Flora Natural world of the past. India kinda has that old glory natural environment still. How to know all thats been lost by extinction. Of herbs, Floral. Etc etc not to mention the beauty of sound. Song birds in their harmony and symphony of mix with other sound of creatures. Etc etc plus. Glory of. Colors. And so on. Smell and a memory. A smelling and a memory emotion. 😇💞💖👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👩‍👧🌺🌹🌻🌸🌷🍀🌲🍄🍟🍔🍕🍞🍮

[yasinv]

I have lost everything noe semse of smell n taste

[ahmet.turunc]

I can't understand the last words because English is not my own language. He says stop smell roses. What does it mean exactly?

[pkiler]

Yes, good for basic knowledge people,  personally, I kept waiting for the "Good Stuff, but alas...