Now, odours can be rated on scale of pleasantness!Published On:
Mon, Oct 3rd, 2011 | Neurobiology | By BioNews A new research
has claimed that odours can be rated on a scale of pleasantness,
which turns out to be an organizing principle for the way humans
experience smell. According to the research conducted at the
Weizmenn Institute of Science, researchers could tell by
measuring the nerve responses whether a subject found a smell
pleasant or unpleasant. In the experiment headed by Prof. Noam
Sobel, the researchers inserted electrodes into the nasal
passages of volunteers and measured the nerves’ responses to
different smells in various sites with each measurement
capturing the response of thousands of smell receptors. They
found that the strength of the nerve signal varied from place to
place on the membrane and it appeared that the receptors are not
evenly distributed, but rather are grouped into distinct sites,
each engaging most strongly with a particular type of scent.
Further investigation showed that