Sense of Smell and Eating

Visual and auditory perception play fundamental and primary role in vital human activities such spatial orientation, communication and forming perception of objects within day-to-day activities of human beings. By these reasons, vision and hearing are considered objective and universal in conjunction with thoughts and decisions. Otherwise, sense of smell, taste and touch are involved in feelings and emotions such as perfumery and cooking, and, to a certain extent and only in combination with vision, pottery, sculpture, dance, and pantomime, which are more subjective and less universal.

Designing user interfaces in human computer interaction (HCI) field has so far focused on senses of sight and sound. Smell is an underused sense in human computer interaction (HCI). This trend has changed through new targeting of olfactory technologies and will be further transformed in the future through the exploration of the sense of smell. Sense of smell is scientifically referred to as olfactory perception, which terms a process involved in olfactory sensory neurons stimulation and higher cerebral centers termination occurring within the nose and resulting in our awareness of an odor. Olfaction is a chemoreception that forms the sense of smell. Olfaction has many purposes, such as the detection of hazards, pheromones, and food. Olfaction commonly integrates with other senses to form the sense of flavor. For example, in our daily lives, smell tells us whether food is safe to eat, if a fire is breaking out in the next room, detects gas leak and so on.

The application area of virtual reality is vast from normal entertainment to the Internet and e-commerce application. With the digital olfactory technology, the customer will be able to smell the product before buying it online. California-based DigiScents Inc. has developed the iSmell personal scent synthesizer in the year 2000, which provides scent-enabled web sites, emails, interactive games, on-line advertising, and many more. The iSmell is a personal synthesizer that emits a broad range of fragrances. The iSmell digital olfactory technology is a complete solution for the digitization, broadcast and synthesis of smells to accompany all forms of media. iSmell is a plug-in computer accessory that contains a basic palette of scented oils from which a bouquet of different smells can be created (Chaitanya, Chetana, Narasimham, 2012).

Olfactory technology could also be used for biometric authentication technology. Biometrics simply refers to the method of using the physiological or behavioral characteristics to determine or verify one's identity. There are different types of biometric techniques based on the physical characteristics (such as eye's features (iris, retina), facial features, hand geometry, ear shape, finger prints, wrist or hand veins, DNA, chemical composition of body odor) and the personal characteristics (such as handwritten signature, keystrokes or typing patterns, voiceprint). Olfactory biometric technique is established based on body odor as a biometric technique. This technique is considered as a perspective scheme due to the fact that this technique is faster and easier since users will be not involved with unfamiliar interfaces such as typing password, signing or even deliberate exposing some part of the body (Kanakam & C B Rao & Hussain 2014). The potential possibilities involving olfactory technology are endless as olfaction can be involved in all physical aspects of life. However, we lack the knowledge and understanding to build such complex machines, and therefore, the research of olfaction is an absolute necessity.

This essay will give an example of how olfactory perception is applied. To help explain how complex olfactory perception really is, a simple action such as eating food was chosen to illustrate. The first step is to pinch the nose taking the scents and take a bite of food.

Eating is something we do many times every day and uses all five of our senses. Let’s explore the sense of smell and how that relates to eating habits. This example will be used to describe all the olfactory processes involved in the seemingly simple and effortless action. Although the step may be quick and effortless, there are many olfactory senses occurring that the brain must process for a person when eating food. A person must first identify the food in the air using just their sense of smell, they then sense the scent of the food and detect the flavors, feeling if it is delicious or not based on innate abilities and on what we learn, ignite memories as well as influence our mood and behavior. If good, they taste the food by putting it in the mouth, they will then experience the food. The olfactory processes involved in each step will be explained throughout this essay.

Smells also seem to come from the mouth, even though there are no cells there responsible for detecting scents. Instead, the sensation of strawberry, for example, depends upon activation of smell cells located at the end of the nasal passage. The information gathered by these cells is relayed to the mouth via a process called olfactory referral. Different from human beings, animals that are primarily dependent on olfaction must obtain a description of the spatial location and the individual odor quality of environmental odor sources through olfaction alone (Hopfield, 1991). Olfaction plays an important part in the human experience, from the detection of unpleasant smells emitted by potentially dangerous substances, to the role of odors in the experience of flavor, and the role of odor in sexual behavior and emotional memory.

The nose contains, on average, 30 million olfactory cells, which are able to distinguish an incredible amount of odors and aromas. Research has suggested as much as 75 to 95 percent of taste when eating food is registered in the olfactory system. During the time of eating food, sense of smell has influenced human beings’ eating act in two main ways, including direct way, called orthonasal olfaction and indirect way, known as retronasal olfaction, which basically transform the olfactory signal into taste of food, thus enhancing our perception of flavors. Orthonasal olfaction refers the time when smelling food through the nose. Referring as retronasal olfaction, sense of smell is encountered in the process of putting the food in the mouth.

First identify the food in the air using just their sense of smell. The main functions of olfaction relate to finding food, avoiding predators and disease, and social communication. Its role in detecting food has resulted in a unique dual mode sensory system. When eating, sense of smell is the most direct sense within five senses (visual, auditory, haptic, olfactory and gustatory sensitivity). In actual fact, before actually seeing or tasting the food, its smell will indicate how good it is. Environmental odorants are ‘smelled’ via the external nostrils, while volatile chemicals in food detected by the same receptors arrive via the nasopharynx, contributing to flavor. When smelling, the odorous molecules reach the nasal cavity and are captured by the mucous which contain olfactory receptors. These olfactory receptors have totally five million cells packed with cilia. These cells, then, come into contact with the odorous molecules, transmit a message to a specific area of the brain, through the olfactory nerve (Riccardo Meggiato, 2015). This arrangement allows the brain to link the consequences of eating with a food's odor, and then later to use this information in the search for food. Recognizing an odorant, such as a food, perfume, requires the detection of complex chemical blends against a noisy chemical background. Once detected by sensory organs, nerve signals are sent to the brains where the signals are processed. The brain does not identify all the molecules that travel through the nose; often only a few substances enable us to distinguish a specific odor.

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Odors can spark distant memories, reminding you, for example, of a meal you ate. This phenomenon may be because the olfactory brain is connected to other parts of the brain that analyze emotions and memories. Odors are associated with our experiences and emotions, which may change with time and experience in relation to different favorites and preferences.

Orthonasal olfaction and retronasal olfaction are two pathways that odors conduct to detect scents in the air, then, influencing humans’ eating. The former one involving the process when odors sniff through the nose. In orthonasal pathway, odors enter the nasal passages and are detected by chemical receptors in the nose. While retronasal pathway gets involved into connecting the top of the throat to the nasal cavity. The retronasal pathway involves aromas that are contained within the foods we eat. As chewing food, released odors travel through the retronasal olfaction, then connect the throat to the nasal cavity. Once in the nasal cavity, these chemicals are detected by olfactory receptor cells in the nose. In other words, the aromas in foods we eat can reach odor detecting cells in the nose. As such, the flavors in the food can be detected. Other types of smell defects include parosmia (a distorted perception of odors) and phantosmia (odors are hallucinated).

By focusing on the detection of odors, olfactory perception works. Olfactory epithelium located in the nose contains millions of chemical receptors that detect odors. When we sniff, chemicals in the air are dissolved in mucus. Odor receptor neurons in olfactory epithelium detect these odors and send the signals to the olfactory bulbs. Along olfactory tracts, these signals are then sent to the olfactory cortex of the brain. The olfactory cortex, which is vital for the processing and perception of odor, located in the temporal lobe of the brain, which is involved in organizing sensory input. The olfactory cortex is also a component of the limbic system, which is the key to encourage the processing of our emotions, survival instincts, and memory formation (Sarafoleanu, 2009). The olfactory cortex has connections with other limbic system structures such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus. The amygdala limbic system is involved in forming emotional responses (particularly fear responses) and memories, the hippocampus indexes and stores memories, and the hypothalamus regulates emotional responses. The hypothalamus is the limbic system that connects senses, such as odors, to the memories and emotions, feelings. The connection between sense of smell and emotions is unlike that of the other senses because olfactory system nerves connect directly to brain structures of the limbic system. Both positive and negative emotions can be triggered by odors as aromas are associated with specific memories.

Additionally, studies have demonstrated that our olfactory sense can be influenced by the emotional expressions of others. This is impacted by the piriform cortex, activity of an area of the brain, which is activated prior to odor sensation. The piriform cortex processes visual information and creates an expectation that a particular fragrance will smell pleasant or unpleasant. Therefore, when we see a person with a disgusted facial expression before sensing an odor, there is an expectation that the odor is unpleasant. This expectation influences how we perceive the odor (Merkelt, 2017). The sense of sight when we see a food also impacts the way that we notice the odor whether it is delicious or not.

Compared to primates and higher order mammals, over the course of evolution, we have deactivated two thirds of the genes in our olfactory receptors. We only have 350 genes left to produce the functional receiver proteins that enable us to smell. The brain solves this problem in two ways. First, by rapid adaptation to background odorants so that new odorants stand out. Second, by pattern matching the neural representation of an odorant to prior olfactory experiences. This account is consistent with olfactory sensory physiology, anatomy, and psychology. Odor perception, and its products, may be subject to further processing of olfactory cognition. While olfactory cognition has features in common with visual or auditory cognition, several aspects are unique, and even those that are common may be instantiated in different ways. These differences can be productively used to evaluate the generality of models of cognition and consciousness (Stevenson, 2013).

Individual people differ greatly in sensitivity to odors. It is unclear how different odors are distinguished by receptor activity. It may be that different proteins in the receptors are responsive to specific molecules of a given odor. Different receptors may have different distributions of these receptor proteins. The olfactory system is highly sensitive. For example, one form of musk can be detected by a normal person at a dilution of less than one ten-millionth of a milligram per liter of air. It has been proposed that molecules stimulate olfactory receptor cells via two mechanisms, direct and indirect or from a distance. The direct-action theories are, however, better supported by modern research.

The olfactory system represents one of the oldest sensory modalities in the phylogenetic history of mammals. As a chemical sensor, the olfactory system detects food and influences social and sexual behavior. The specialized olfactory epithelial cells characterize the only group of neurons capable of regeneration. Activation occurs when odiferous molecules come in contact with specialized processes known as the olfactory vesicles.

The chemical senses are particularly of interest in the context of food interaction design, linked to the study of food in everyday life, such as investigating the ecologies of domestic food consumption and package design, but also with respect to the exploration of novel interaction concepts, for instance, shape-changing food, edible screen or interface.

From all this information it can be concluded that sense of smell is vital and convenient in daily life. It is a very complex process that is still yet to be fully understood, but it is a very powerful sense and can have many uses for the future and smell interaction design. Despite the fact that the act of smelling a scent in the air is passive, subjective and seems to be useless without interacting with other more powerful senses, such as visual and auditory, the information including emotions and feelings that olfactory perception triggers is not useless at all. This type of information is the key in encouraging customers to prefer one product than others, knowing how the consumer feels means the product design can be manipulated to best suit the consumer. This can be applied for any product, if the olfactory perception behind the product is understood, then it can be designed perfectly. Further research into olfactory perception is an absolute necessity for the future in partnership with the technological advances, investing olfactory technology into scents testing via e-commerce of perfumery and food industry, biometric technology into security, will be revolutionary.