humans have a nose for navigation because our brains are wired to convert smells into spatial information<\/strong>, new research from UC\u00a0Berkeley shows.<\/p>\nWhile humans may lack the scent-tracking sophistication of, say, a search-and-rescue dog, we can sniff our way, blindfolded, toward a location whose scent we\u2019ve smelled only once before, according to the UC Berkeley study published today in the journal\u00a0PLOS ONE<\/em>.<\/p>\nSimilar investigations have been conducted on birds and rodents, but this is the first time smell-based navigation has been field-tested on humans. The results evoke a GPS-like superpower one could call an \u201colfactory positioning system<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cWhat we\u2019ve found is that humans have the capability to orient ourselves along highways of odors and crisscross landscapes using only our sense of smell,\u201d said study lead author Lucia Jacobs, a UC Berkeley psychology professor who studies evolution and cognition in animals and humans.<\/p>\n
Smell is a primitive sense that our early ancestors used for foraging, hunting and mating, among other skills necessary for survival<\/strong>. Early sailors and aviators gave anecdotal reports of using odors to navigate, but there have been no experiential scientific studies on this until now.<\/p>\nThe process of smelling, or olfaction, is triggered by odor molecules traveling up the nasal passage, where they are identified by receptors that send signals to the olfactory bulb<\/strong> \u2013\u00a0 which sits between the nasal cavity and the brain\u2019s frontal lobe \u2013 and processes the information. A key to the connection between smell, memory and navigation is that olfactory bulbs have a strong neural link to the brain\u2019s hippocampus, which creates spatial maps of our environment.<\/p>\n\u201cOlfaction is like this background fabric to our world that we might not be conscious of, but we are using it to stay oriented,\u201d Jacobs said. \u201cWe may not see a eucalyptus grove as we pass it at night, but our brain is encoding the smells and creating a map.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pigeons and rats, for example, are known to orient themselves using odor maps, or \u201csmellscapes,\u201d but sighted humans rely more heavily on visual landmarks, and so the study turned up some surprising results.<\/p>\n
Two dozen young adults were tested on orientation and navigation tasks under various scenarios in which their hearing, sight or smell was blocked<\/strong>. The test location was a 25-by-20-foot room where 32 containers with sponges were placed at points around the edge of the room. Two of the sponges were infused with essential oils such as sweet birch, anise or clove.<\/p>\nIn the smell-only experiment, study participants were led, one at a time, into the room wearing blindfolds, earplugs and headphones and walked in circles for disorientation purposes. They spent a minute at a specific point on the grid, where they inhaled a combination of two fragrances. After being walked in circles again for disorientation purposes, they were tasked with sniffing their way back to the starting point where they had smelled the two fragrances.<\/p>\n
Overall, study participants navigated relatively closely to the targeted location when using only their sense of smell, compared to when other sensory inputs were blocked<\/strong>. Moreover, they were not just following one scent, but using information from both scents to orient themselves toward a point on an odor grid.<\/p>\n\u201cWe never thought humans could have a good enough sense of smell for this<\/strong>,\u201d said Jacobs. But in retrospect, she noted, the results are \u201cas obvious as the nose on my face.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nJacobs will be exploring this mechanism further as a scientist selected to be on the team of the National Science Foundation\u2019s \u201cCracking the Olfactory Code\u201d Ideas Lab, which takes place this summer. In addition to Jacobs, co-authors on the study are UC Berkeley researchers Jennifer Arter, Amy Cook and Frank Sulloway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the University of California – Berkeley media release: Like homing pigeons, humans have a nose for navigation because our brains are wired to convert smells into spatial information, new research from UC\u00a0Berkeley shows. While humans may lack the scent-tracking sophistication of, say, a search-and-rescue dog, we can sniff our way, blindfolded, toward a location… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,60,324],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience","category-perception","category-senses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18008,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18006\/revisions\/18008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"smelly](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/smelly-scent.jpg\")
<\/a>Like homing pigeons, humans have a nose for navigation because our brains are wired to convert smells into spatial information<\/strong>, new research from UC\u00a0Berkeley shows.<\/p>\n