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0:00
I am Adam Dewan,
a professor in the Department
of psychology and program
of neuroscience at
Florida State University.
Today it's my distinct
pleasure to tell you about
a very important yet
underappreciated sensory
system the Olfactory System.
0:16
We're going to discuss how
your sense of smell impacts
your daily life and
how your life might
be affected if you were to
lose your sense of smell.
Most importantly, we're going to
discuss the neural
circuits and processes
that underlie your ability to
convert volatile
odor chemicals into
a neural signal and ultimately a
recognizable percept
like the smell
of strawberries or
the smell of pizza.
0:38
Like I said earlier,
Olfactory System
is responsible for
your sense of smell.
This is your ability
to detect and
identify volatile airborne
chemicals through your nose.
In this picture, the little girl
is snipping which is the action
of drawing in air through
your nose and her nose
is near the flower.
This has the effect
of drawing in
the volatile chemicals being
emitted from the
flower into your nose.
We'll talk about what happens in
a couple more slides about when
these odorous molecules enter
your nose and how
they're converted to
a neural signal and ultimately
a percept of a specific odour.
1:11
But first, beyond the importance
of the Olfactory
System to detect
airborne chemicals emitted from
a source like that picture
of the little girl
smelling the flower,
your sense of smell
plays a central role in
food flavor and
appetite stimulation.
Have you ever noticed
that when you're sick,
food has less flavor.
This is because nasal congestion
prevents volatile
chemicals being
emitted through the
chewing process
to stimulate Olfactory System.
In fact, the majority of
the flavor we perceive from
food originates from
the Olfactory System,
not your sense of taste
otherwise referred to as
the gustatory system.
Sometime today I'd like you
to try a little experiment.
I want you to eat a
candy and I want you to
eat that candy while holding
your nose very tightly.
What you'll experience is
that the candy will lose
the majority of the flavor.
Only really the sweetness of
that candy should remain.
This is because your sense of
taste which is on
your tongue is responsible
for the detection of sweet,
salty, bitter, sour and umami.
But every other aspect
of flavor that you
experience when
you eat something
results from the
Olfactory System.
Olfactory System has
the ability to detect
airborne chemicals being
emitted from the food.
For example, the roasting
meats or maybe roasting
vegetables that you might
smell and trigger our hunger.
Then this increased hunger
may stimulate us to
eat some of this food,
these roasting meats or
vegetables where the flavor of
the food will be further
governed by the
Olfactory System.
As you chew that meat or
you chew those vegetables,
all the volatiles that are being
emitted are also going
to be detected by
your Olfactory system
and trigger and
result in the
flavor of the food.
Thus it may not be surprising
to find out that losing
