World-class "noses" in the perfume and wine business are not born with an outsized sense of smell but acquire it through years of professional sniffing, according to new research.
In experiments with novice and veteran perfume makers, French scientists found that the ability to detect and identify hundreds, even thousands, of different odours depends almost entirely on rigorous training.
— Read more at Super sense of smell not innate at Yahoo News.
This helps to explain why my taste has broadened so much over time! 🙂
Exactly.
Interesting. And encouraging. 🙂
Though I have to wonder if, to extend the musician analogy the person quoted in the article raises, there aren’t some brains/talents more prone to picking up and running with this ability? I mean, not everybody can play the piano equally. (Honestly, I’m ready to challenge Malcolm Gladwell on the 10,000 hours thing on this one…)
Nonetheless, I AM inclined to believe that it is an ability that if more exercised–and more expected–would be more prominent in most of us. Am hoping that recent research showing old people can build muscle and improve their physical selves, as well as improve mental acuity, has some sort of relationship with this notion that you can increase your smell-ability. 😉
Oh, I am sure. And some people have more patience than others, and some have better memories. And of course, as perfumers, some have better taste.
I can definitely tell that I can smell more aromas now than I could a few years ago (esp. the subtle ones), even though I’ve always been a perfume ho. I used to do more homework when I first got serious by listing all the notes in this little tablet. Now I don’t bother – I can usually detect most of what is going on and the rest I let go. I like to maintain a little mystery, and I don’t have enough brain energy to remember it all anyway, esp. when I can look all that stuff up online. I like to keep it fun, and I certainly enjoy when I can sniff out different accords.
I’m a bit handicapped in the olfactory department, what with allergies, sinus and stuff. But I am trying to improve: how ddid you record the notes in your ‘tablet’, and of which perfumes?
Hi Merlin – when I was interested in a fragrance – and even the random about 25 I already had before I became a hard core perfume nut – I went and searched online to find their notes list. A really good place to do lots of research is the Perfumed Court, b/c it mostly has notes lists with all the different fragrances and it breaks them down into categories, like oriental, chypre, etc. So that was really helpful. (NST and some of the other blogs list notes too.)
I am an old fashioned learner, so just hand copying down the name of the fragrance and the notes was really a great learning process. I did it in one of those standard little fat notebooks. When I ran out of pages, I gave up. I always try and fail at continuing the same on a real spreadsheet. I do like to keep track of what I have with an inventory, but I don’t list notes anymore since I can find them so easily on so many websites. Good luck!
Thanks for the detail. That sounds like a good strategy, and I’m sure by the time you ran out of pages you didn’t need to be doing the exercise anymore. Typically, I can only make out one note very clearly…
This makes a lot of sense.
I’m sure some people have more “natural” aptitude or propensity for many skills, but we often think that so many traits are inborn and limit ourselves — or others — based on that belief. (Just as an example, it makes me sad when people say things like “I just can’t do anything artistic.”)
I once read an academic article that described a study showing it was possible to scientifically measure a change in the ability to detect certain musks after exposure to those compounds over time. I still find that rather fascinating.
If anyone’s interested, this is a fairly good, non-academic article dealing with the study I mentioned, as well as the question of anosmia & hyperosmia: http://www.physoc.org/publications/pn/issuepdf/56/18-19.pdf
I guess I inferred too much from that one particular study though:
“This phenomenon of sensitization to an odour is actually quite rare. Mostly repetitive exposure to odours leads to a decrease in responsiveness as the olfactory system adapts and/or habituates. Adaptation is a peripheral process and habituation is a central process, both involving an attenuation of the reponse to the repeated stimulus.”
Fascinating, thanks so much for the link Joe. Absolutely cracked me up that the one illustration they thought to include (besides pic of author) is of pigs mating, LOL…
Robin, thanks for this post and also to Joe for the related article.
I am fascinated by anosmia and hyperosmia. I was always astounded when I first started reading NST that many commenters were apparently smelling something completely different than I was in the same perfume. This makes perfect sense if perception of a given molecule can easily vary from one person to another by a factor of a thousand. It’s amazing that the art of perfume works at all! 🙂
Strangely, the guide describes ELdO nombrille immense as a ‘manifest knock-off’ of L’Artisan’s Timbuktu. I haven’t tried them side by side but from memory I cant detect ANY similarity between a spicy transparent and a dark patchouli???
I think many of us have specific anosmias, although perhaps after reading Joe’s linked article, I should say “specific anosmias”.
Thank you for posting this fascinating article, Robin–I found it so interesting and like ScentSelf, enouraging. How positive to think that we can (still) develop abilities and skills we thought were inaccessible to us from birth, because we thought they were innate (or absent). I think part of the point of the article is related to something Joe said–that while individuals are born with different aptitudes or potentials, that these both can and must be developed–must in the sense that the innate potential is worth little without the training and effort to develop it. It really is about how to get to Carnegie Hall–“Practice, practice, practice!!”, and I suppose it’s not so different in getting to be Michael Jordan, Glenn Gould, J.K. Rowling, or Dominique Ropion–they all practice and learn fanatically and with immense discipline, and revise and “edit” their strategies and creative ideas along the way. I had my nose tested at IFF about 20 years ago, and while I did pretty well, they told me they took “kids” of 19, 20, and trained them very young, so they could start them fresh and develop skills over a long time–there is so much to learn in the olfactory world, it could easily be a lifelong learning process. I think the article also meant that the creative process is predicated on a deep knowledge bank, with the intellect applied to categories of sensory raw material, as with composing: both are really abstract, when you think about it, and are often done in the head without the “notes”, whether musical or olfactory.
Very interesting. I think everyone does have nearly the same capacity for smell and taste and other senses, since humans have needed those throughout time. But so few people know how to tune their minds into what they smell, and it gets harder as the pace of life gets faster. In contrast, I think talent in the arts – music, etc. – blesses some people more than others. So smell isn’t a talent like playing music. But tuning into what you smell is a skill.
Ceelouise, I think you make great points–that so few people know how to “tune their minds” into what they smell, and organize all the raw sensory data to make sense of it. And I think you are right when you say that we humans would not have survived without a sense of smell to detect danger, whether wild beasts, fire, or rotten food. Do you think the turning in is a skill that everyone could acquire equally well, with practice, training, and perseverance, and that it’s primarily a difference of interest and commitment? I am sure that Robin, for instance, has outstanding olfactory skills, and I doubt I could ever get close to that level, although I would love to! In fact, as a newcomer, I’m so impressed with how knowledgeable everyone here seems to be.