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Olfactic communication is a channel of nonverbal communication referring to the various ways people and animals communicate and engage in social interaction through their sense of smell. Our human olfactory sense is one of the most phylogenetically primitive [1] and emotionally intimate [2] of the five senses; the sensation of smell is thought to be the most matured and developed human sense.
Human ancestors essentially depended on their sense of smell to alert themselves of danger such as poisonous food and to locate potent mating partners. Using the sense of smell as an instrument paved a way for smell to become a platform of nonverbal communication. Smell also has a significant influence on social interactions. Through their branch of olfaction research, the National Science Foundation recorded that over 70 percent of American adults believe a person's body odor has a significant effect on how interested they will be when conversing with people of a different sex. [3] This process is possible with olfactory bulbs, the part of the brain that discriminates and enhances certain odors. Typically, women will prefer men whose natural odor is similar to their own, while heterosexual men are attracted to females with high estrogen levels and strong menstrual secretions. [4] An entire industry has been developed to provide people with personal smell-masking products, such as perfume, cologne, deodorant, and scented lotions. When a person covers their natural body odor with a pleasant smell, they are communicating their desire to be attractive either emotionally, sexually, or romantically. [3]
Olfactics is the most critical sense of human biology for centuries, the first classification system for odors was not developed until the later half of the 1700s by Carolus Linnaeus; today, humans are most dependent on eyesight. Linnaeus' system was composed of seven different categories that various types of smells could be identified with. These categories are champhoraceous musky, floral, pepperminty, ethereal, pungent, and putrid. [5] This classification system has been readvised numerous times and is still being developed to actively interpret human olfactics. Linnaeus' work sparked interest in several colleagues and other scientists, leading to theories of how olfactics are linked to a person's mood and emotional state. This led to the creation of scented room vaporizer in 1851. Eugene Remmel's room perfumer was originally designed to uplift or relax the occupants of the space. However, this invention instead rose to popularity for its simple ability of providing suitable air quality by ventilating small, heavily populated public places. Today, people use scented essential oils in their home or office to create a certain ambience. For example, peppermint is used to uplift dreary attitudes, citrus attracts motivational energy, vanilla is used to promote calmness, and lavender predicts relaxation. Sharing a scent with the entire room spreads a message of what atmosphere the host would like to set and in return, nonverbally communicates the manner in which the guests or visitors should act.
In 1916, Hans Henning created a three dimensional smell-prism with six corners. Each corner represented a distinctive smell including flowery or ethereal, putrid, fruity or fragrant, spicy, burned, and resinous. Henning's theory suggested all other smells were a combination of these six and each smell occupied its own location on the prism. [5] This prism led to new developments in understanding olfactics, however not everyone was satisfied with Henning's research. Today, there is still not a universally agreed upon standardized classification system for olfaction. This is primarily due to the drastic differences in how certain smells are perceived by various cultures. Although sufficient research is still being recorded to explain the connection between olfaction and preferences, experts have theorized that certain smells are connected to a person's thinking, creativity, memory, and reaction abilities. This is because when a person is experiencing a negative emotion, their olfaction sense sharpens. This creates a lasting memory, correlating the scent with a certain experience and emotions a person felt. [3] The same patterns can be detected when a person feels joy, sadness, or fear.
The attributions we make through the olfactic channel have implications for our moral understandings of ourselves and others, along with the judgments and evaluations we make about identity, social class, status, sex, race, gender and ethnic relationships. [6]
Olfactics or smell have incredibly varying interpretations depending on where a person is in the world. In some cultures negative smells can result in positive emotions where in the western world, negative smells are often met with negative emotions. The sense of smell has often been overlooked and understudied and many people often perceive olfactics as a lower importance sense as it pertains to communication. The importance and variation of olfactics can be seen in how different countries use the senses and how different cultures interpret different smells. For example, rot is often a very negative smell and is often met with a tightening reaction in the body including a restricting of the pupils in an attempt for the body to receive a reduced amount of information. However, as the smell may be met with a reaction of disgust in one country, another country may react with happiness as it is a way for some cultures to gauge whether food has finished going through a certain process or not.
Olfactics also can impact how someone is received in a social setting in different countries or cultures. In different regions of the world, it is necessary to develop different coding linguistics in order to survive in that area. Smell is one sense that is often poorly coded in human communication in western culture [7] because humans have a hard time identifying smells and communicating them. [8] Researcher Asifa Majid at the University of York argues that there is cross cultural evidence that there are numerous languages that utilize coding olfaction in their language. These languages have encoded smell into their grammar due to their environmental needs. [9] The Umpila are Indigenous people of Australia that have the most codeable olfactory sense in their language. [7]
Due to the impact smell has on the human brain and the reception of different people, it can impact whether or not an individual accepts another individual. Bad smells can drive people away due to the harsh nature of the odors, whereas nice smelling fragrances can communicate positively. [10] During medieval times peasants would often give off horrid odors and the higher noble classes would often look down on them for it, and while the reaction may not be as harsh, the same instances can be seen in today's world. Big corporations can manipulate the olfactic senses in customers or employees by having a nice scent being put out in order to give off feelings of comfort or to promote attitudes of productivity.
Scent can transmit an intrinsic message. It can also transmit a message that relies on, or affects, other senses, such as:
The interactions between the touch and olfactic senses will dictate behavior due to the circumstances of where the interaction is set to occur. It could also be used with smell in an attempt to identify what a random or unknown object could be. For example, If a person were to walk into a room that did not smell good they would be less likely to interact with the environment around them. If a room smells welcoming and comforting a person would be more likely to stay longer and interact with more things. These examples provide a brief understanding on how smell may affect the behaviors or interactions behind certain senses. [11]
Taste and smell go hand in hand as some of the main stimulants for flavor is the result that comes from smell working with taste. The human body has many complex interactions when it comes to how the five senses can help or hurt each other. These two senses can impact people's emotions and behaviors and can also cause pain depending on what the sense is being used for. [12] These senses can also be positively or negatively affected by medication, disease, smoking, or drinking. For example, COVID-19 was well known for temporarily nullifying the sense of taste and smell. [13] Olfactics can help dictate on whether or not something should be consumed, but at times the sense of smell can be fooled.
In a large survey study on the importance and attention to olfaction in daily life, Wrzesniewski et al. found that completely losing one's sense of smell was ranked as equivalent to losing one's little left toe or hearing in one ear. [14] Sight is a common sense but when it comes to smelling what a person is surrounded by (i.e., environment). The sensory stimuli can affect a person's behavior when browsing through a grocery store, even in the environment. Odor can affect individuals subconscious mind and make a consumer become more allured to specific things. [15] Visual dominance refers not only to neural processing but also to vision's cultural and social primacy.
With olfactics we perceive auditory cues in our everyday life. [16] For instance: a person who struggles with halitosis. While talking to others, since people experience not only odors through the front of the nose or the back of the nose, but also sounds, auditory perceptions may be neglected or drawn out by the sense of smell. Of the five senses sound has the least impact on olfactic communication. With sound a person may be able to hear the sound of food cooking, though they must use their olfactory epithelium which contains special receptors that are sensitive to odor molecules that travel through the air. [17]
As of March 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak left many individuals losing their sense of smell and/or taste, those that have had the feeling of loss in their senses were told to quarantine or severe isolation. Many people still to modern day are battling with loss of smell and taste and have upper respiratory problems. During the COVID-19 outbreak, patients with sudden loss of smell should initiate social distancing and home isolation measures and be tested for SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic test when available. Olfactory training is recommended when smell does not come back after one month but can be started earlier. [18] The leading cause to the loss of smell is URTI, Smell loss in URTI is caused by a multifactorial combination of mechanical obstruction for the odorant transmission in the olfactory cleft due to mucosal inflammation (cytokine storm) and shedding (neurodegeneration) of the olfactory neuro-epithelium which interfere with odorants binding to OR [19]
Smell plays an important largely nonconscious role in the process of physical and romantic attraction. From an evolutionary perspective, the most important human outcome is successful procreation and the production of healthy offspring capable of procreating themselves. One key factor in evolution is the development genes known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). MHC has evolved in humans to allow for individuals to distinguish compatibility efforts through smell when choosing a mate to ensure stronger immune systems for survival in offspring. To test the MHC theory, participants were invited to sniff dirty week-old t-shirts. Participants preferred the odor of the t-shirts that tended to have a genetically different MHC than their own. [20] In ovulating women, it is found that their preference of smell in a male is more reliant on facial attractiveness, suggesting when a woman is at her most fertile smell becomes more crucial in the decision-making process. [21] One way to ensure our offspring will be healthy and effective in this regard is for us to seek, find, and mate with healthy romantic partners. Thus, the process of natural selection has made us particularly attentive to the various signs indicative of the healthiest potential mates we can attract, and one's scent is a particularly important cue to sexual attraction in this regard. [22]
In the animal kingdom, chemical communication or semiochemicals is received though the olfactory channel allowing for the animal to decode and recognize chemical signals. Among other animals, animal cognition research finds that dogs are more reliant on olfaction than any other sense. [23] Dogs have a significantly larger olfactory epithelium with 30 percent more olfactory receptors than humans. [24] Having more olfactory receptors that can recognize a much larger variety of odorants. Dogs rely on sniffing to gather past information on their surrounding environment though odor detection and identification allowing them to localize odors. Semiochemicals are "a substance excreted by an animal, to the outside of that individual, which is then received by another individual, classically of the same species, which then elicits some behavioral or developmental response related to the survival of the species." [25]
Many mammals exhibit both odorant and vomeronasal sensitive organs. Pigs communicate through pheromones commonly and also display main olfactory epithelium response to some pheromones. Additionally in mice we see vomeronasal response from odors not produced by animals. Some mutant mice defective in VNO activity continue to display activity that is indicative of pheromone communication. Odorants and pheromones display many similarities. Additionally, it is seen in mice that the response to the presence of certain semiochemicals and odors can be learned. For example, a mouse is not aggressive to the scent of his own pheromones. However, when these pheromones are presented on another male mouse the aggressive behavior will be displayed. Mice form an olfactory memory which helps them define and react to the presence of pheromones. Humans have no VNO but still a level of communication through semiochemicals. These classes of pheromonal action are the opposite-sex attractants, the same-sex repellants (territorial markers), mother–infant bonding attractants and those modulating the timing of the fertile cycle. [26] There is contradictory evidence supporting the hypothesis that humans use pheromones in order to regulate behavior through these four channels. [27] Humans are capable of distinctly recognizing and empathizing with emotion identified from bodily odors.
Research done by Kokocińska-Kusiak A, Woszczyło M, Zybala M, Maciocha J, Barłowska K, Dzięcioł M (August 2021), found that dogs can transmit messages through semiochemicals in urine marking among their environment leaving a "scent mark" for other animals to decode later on. In male dogs and wolves, urine-marking used more frequently in unknown areas and the practice is even continued when there is no urine left, meaning the passing of semiochemicals is not strictly tied to the act of urination. [28] Animal behaviors can be altered by chemical stimuli. Chemical stimuli is a crucial source of information that elicits different behavioral responses from aquatic invertebrates. For example, in Elyssa Rosen's research she was able to find that hermit crabs have different reactions to water that has been previously occupied by a potential predatory and non-predatory crabs. It is important for hermit crabs to be able to decode these chemical stimuli in order to understand if the territory is safe to occupy. [29] The perfect environment to receive semiochemicals is though humidity and light sun. Elements that can negatively disrupt the chemical communication channel is heavy rain in the environment because it brings the scents hanging in the air and burring them into the ground as well as fog that causes a scent to diffuse and linger in the air which can cause confusion. [29]
Natural human body odors may also carry emotional information that can be decoded by others which allows for communication. [30] In one study, study groups placed cotton gauze into their armpit and were shown fear or happiness inducing videos. Later the sweat samples were given to participants of the opposite sex. They were able to determine the emotional state of the donor at "above chance levels." [30] Researcher Denise Chen and Jeanneette Haviland-Jones's findings the happiness odors can be detected more frequently by women than men. [30] Disgust and fear both have identifiable and distinguishable scents. Should an individual be exposed to the scent of fear (in this case sweat samples from first time skydivers) various parts of the brain are activated: the amygdala and hypothalamus primarily. Additionally, the insula (which processes sensory and emotional information), the fusiform gyrus (which plays a key role in face and object recognition), and the cingulate cortex (which helps regulate responses to pain and emotion). [31] Activating the appropriate regions of the brain when the brain recognizes the presence of applicable semiochemicals allows for more cognition.
Olfactic cues can impact the degree of cooperativeness of an individual. [32] Generally, men are rated as more selfish and less cooperative when presented with a masculine scent. This scent contained higher concentrations of androstadienone. Scent donors were rated on cooperativeness before the sample was taken, and this sample had a positive correlation to the cooperativeness of the subject in a later test. The exact compounds produced in relation to cooperativeness require further investigation.
A pheromone is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting like hormones outside the body of the secreting individual, to affect the behavior of the receiving individuals. There are alarm pheromones, food trail pheromones, sex pheromones, and many others that affect behavior or physiology. Pheromones are used by many organisms, from basic unicellular prokaryotes to complex multicellular eukaryotes. Their use among insects has been particularly well documented. In addition, some vertebrates, plants and ciliates communicate by using pheromones. The ecological functions and evolution of pheromones are a major topic of research in the field of chemical ecology.
The vomeronasal organ (VNO), or Jacobson's organ, is the paired auxiliary olfactory (smell) sense organ located in the soft tissue of the nasal septum, in the nasal cavity just above the roof of the mouth in various tetrapods. The name is derived from the fact that it lies adjacent to the unpaired vomer bone in the nasal septum. It is present and functional in all snakes and lizards, and in many mammals, including cats, dogs, cattle, pigs, and some primates. Some humans may have physical remnants of a VNO, but it is vestigial and non-functional.
The olfactory bulb is a neural structure of the vertebrate forebrain involved in olfaction, the sense of smell. It sends olfactory information to be further processed in the amygdala, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the hippocampus where it plays a role in emotion, memory and learning.
The olfactory system, or sense of smell, is the sensory system used for olfaction. Olfaction is one of the special senses directly associated with specific organs. Most mammals and reptiles have a main olfactory system and an accessory olfactory system. The main olfactory system detects airborne substances, while the accessory system senses fluid-phase stimuli.
Olfactory receptors (ORs), also known as odorant receptors, are chemoreceptors expressed in the cell membranes of olfactory receptor neurons and are responsible for the detection of odorants which give rise to the sense of smell. Activated olfactory receptors trigger nerve impulses which transmit information about odor to the brain. In vertebrates, these receptors are members of the class A rhodopsin-like family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The olfactory receptors form the largest multigene family in vertebrates consisting of around 400 genes in humans and 1400 genes in mice. In insects, olfactory receptors are members of an unrelated group of ligand-gated ion channels.
Body odor or body odour (BO) is present in all animals and its intensity can be influenced by many factors. Body odor has a strong genetic basis, but can also be strongly influenced by various factors, such as sex, diet, health, and medication. The body odor of human males plays an important role in human sexual attraction, as a powerful indicator of MHC/HLA heterozygosity. Significant evidence suggests that women are attracted to men whose body odor is different from theirs, indicating that they have immune genes that are different from their own, which may produce healthier offspring.
An aroma compound, also known as an odorant, aroma, fragrance or flavoring, is a chemical compound that has a smell or odor. For an individual chemical or class of chemical compounds to impart a smell or fragrance, it must be sufficiently volatile for transmission via the air to the olfactory system in the upper part of the nose. As examples, various fragrant fruits have diverse aroma compounds, particularly strawberries which are commercially cultivated to have appealing aromas, and contain several hundred aroma compounds.
Androstenone (5α-androst-16-en-3-one) is a 16-androstene class steroidal pheromone. It is found in boar's saliva, celery cytoplasm, and truffle fungus. Androstenone was the first mammalian pheromone to be identified. It is found in high concentrations in the saliva of male pigs, and, when inhaled by a female pig that is in heat, results in the female assuming the mating stance. Androstenone is the active ingredient in 'Boarmate', a commercial product made by DuPont sold to pig farmers to test sows for timing of artificial insemination.
The docking theory of olfaction proposes that the smell of an odorant molecule is due to a range of weak non-covalent interactions between the odorant [a ligand] and one or more G protein-coupled odorant receptors. These include intermolecular forces, such as dipole-dipole and Van der Waals interactions, as well as hydrogen bonding. More specific proposed interactions include metal-ion, ion-ion, cation-pi and pi-stacking. Interactions can be influenced by the hydrophobic effect. Conformational changes can also have a significant impact on interactions with receptors, as ligands have been shown to interact with ligands without being in their conformation of lowest energy.
The vibration theory of smell proposes that a molecule's smell character is due to its vibrational frequency in the infrared range. This controversial theory is an alternative to the more widely accepted docking theory of olfaction, which proposes that a molecule's smell character is due to a range of weak non-covalent interactions between its protein odorant receptor, such as electrostatic and Van der Waals interactions as well as H-bonding, dipole attraction, pi-stacking, metal ion, Cation–pi interaction, and hydrophobic effects, in addition to the molecule's conformation.
In medicine and anatomy, the special senses are the senses that have specialized organs devoted to them:
Rachel Sarah Herz is a Canadian and American psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist, recognized for her research on the psychology of smell.
Dysosmia is a disorder described as any qualitative alteration or distortion of the perception of smell. Qualitative alterations differ from quantitative alterations, which include anosmia and hyposmia. Dysosmia can be classified as either parosmia or phantosmia. Parosmia is a distortion in the perception of an odorant. Odorants smell different from what one remembers. Phantosmia is the perception of an odor when no odorant is present. The cause of dysosmia still remains a theory. It is typically considered a neurological disorder and clinical associations with the disorder have been made. Most cases are described as idiopathic and the main antecedents related to parosmia are URTIs, head trauma, and nasal and paranasal sinus disease. Dysosmia tends to go away on its own but there are options for treatment for patients that want immediate relief.
An odor or odour is a smell or a scent caused by one or more volatilized chemical compounds generally found in low concentrations that humans and many animals can perceive via their olfactory system. While smell can refer to pleasant and unpleasant odors, the terms scent, aroma, and fragrance are usually reserved for pleasant-smelling odors and are frequently used in the food and cosmetic industry to describe floral scents or to refer to perfumes.
The sense of smell, or olfaction, is the special sense through which smells are perceived. The sense of smell has many functions, including detecting desirable foods, hazards, and pheromones, and plays a role in taste.
Olfactory memory refers to the recollection of odors. Studies have found various characteristics of common memories of odor memory including persistence and high resistance to interference. Explicit memory is typically the form focused on in the studies of olfactory memory, though implicit forms of memory certainly supply distinct contributions to the understanding of odors and memories of them. Research has demonstrated that the changes to the olfactory bulb and main olfactory system following birth are extremely important and influential for maternal behavior. Mammalian olfactory cues play an important role in the coordination of the mother infant bond, and the following normal development of the offspring. Maternal breast odors are individually distinctive, and provide a basis for recognition of the mother by her offspring.
Odour is sensory stimulation of the olfactory membrane of the nose by a group of molecules. Certain body odours are connected to human sexual attraction. Humans can make use of body odour subconsciously to identify whether a potential mate will pass on favourable traits to their offspring. Body odour may provide significant cues about the genetic quality, health and reproductive success of a potential mate.
Sniffing is a perceptually-relevant behavior, defined as the active sampling of odors through the nasal cavity for the purpose of information acquisition. This behavior, displayed by all terrestrial vertebrates, is typically identified based upon changes in respiratory frequency and/or amplitude, and is often studied in the context of odor guided behaviors and olfactory perceptual tasks. Sniffing is quantified by measuring intra-nasal pressure or flow or air or, while less accurate, through a strain gauge on the chest to measure total respiratory volume. Strategies for sniffing behavior vary depending upon the animal, with small animals displaying sniffing frequencies ranging from 4 to 12 Hz but larger animals (humans) sniffing at much lower frequencies, usually less than 2 Hz. Subserving sniffing behaviors, evidence for an "olfactomotor" circuit in the brain exists, wherein perception or expectation of an odor can trigger brain respiratory center to allow for the modulation of sniffing frequency and amplitude and thus acquisition of odor information. Sniffing is analogous to other stimulus sampling behaviors, including visual saccades, active touch, and whisker movements in small animals. Atypical sniffing has been reported in cases of neurological disorders, especially those disorders characterized by impaired motor function and olfactory perception.
Odor molecules are detected by the olfactory receptors in the olfactory epithelium of the nasal cavity. Each receptor type is expressed within a subset of neurons, from which they directly connect to the olfactory bulb in the brain. Olfaction is essential for survival in most vertebrates; however, the degree to which an animal depends on smell is highly varied. Great variation exists in the number of OR genes among vertebrate species, as shown through bioinformatic analyses. This diversity exists by virtue of the wide-ranging environments that they inhabit. For instance, dolphins that are secondarily adapted to an aquatic niche possess a considerably smaller subset of genes than most mammals. OR gene repertoires have also evolved in relation to other senses, as higher primates with well-developed vision systems tend to have a smaller number of OR genes. As such, investigating the evolutionary changes of OR genes can provide useful information on how genomes respond to environmental changes. Differences in smell sensitivity are also dependent on the anatomy of the olfactory apparatus, such as the size of the olfactory bulb and epithelium.
Insect olfaction refers to the function of chemical receptors that enable insects to detect and identify volatile compounds for foraging, predator avoidance, finding mating partners and locating oviposition habitats. Thus, it is the most important sensation for insects. Most important insect behaviors must be timed perfectly which is dependent on what they smell and when they smell it. For example, olfaction is essential for locating host plants and hunting prey in many species of insects, such as the moth Deilephila elpenor and the wasp Polybia sericea, respectively.