The new research has challenge long-term views on human olfaction, revealing that our ability to detect changes in odours is far quicker than once thought. Dr Wen Zhou, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led a team that found humans can distinguish between the order of smells with much greater speed and accuracy than previously assume.
Contrary to the belief that our sense of smell operates slowly, participants in the study demonstrate a remarkable sensitivity to the order of odours arriving at their noses.
The study, publish in Nature Human Behaviour, involve a unique setup where scents were deliver to participants’ noses in rapid sequences.
The team devise an apparatus that could deliver two distinct scents at different times during a single sniff.
The scents reach participants’ noses within intervals as short as 18 milliseconds.
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Many participants were able to correctly identify whether the order of odours was the same or reverse, even when the difference between the scents arrival times was just 40-80 milliseconds.
Dr Wen Zhou explain that while humans could detect when the order of scents change, it was more challenging for them to pinpoint which smell came first.
This sensitivity to the sequence of odours suggests that human perception of smell is shape by the timing of scents entering the nose.
Also, participants were more successful at this task when smelling lemon and onion-like odours, particularly when the time difference between scents was around 167 milliseconds.
The findings challenge the idea that the human sense of smell is less refine than our other senses, such as sight.
As per Dr Wen Zhou, the ability to detect small changes in odours is not dependent on recognising the order of smells but rather on a faster, more complex mechanism.
This research opens up new possibilities for understanding how the human brain processes sensory information.
