[HN Gopher] How Smell Guides Our Inner World
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       How Smell Guides Our Inner World
        
       Author : anarbadalov
       Score  : 50 points
       Date   : 2025-12-29 04:35 UTC (5 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
        
       | DarkNova6 wrote:
       | I was hoping to read an article on how smells guide our bio-
       | chemistry, but it's more a historical piece.
       | 
       | Sense of smell strikes me as the sense with the greatest
       | discrepency between individuals. Some are incredibly attuned,
       | others are completely oblivious to it.
       | 
       | Clearly the piece is written by somebody very passionate about
       | their own sense of smell.
        
         | justonceokay wrote:
         | I began smelling (ha!) much more acutely after living for a few
         | years with some country bumpkins in Seattle. We would take
         | walks together and they could smell mushrooms, flowers,
         | animals, and other things on the wind that I was not privy too.
         | 
         | I think in cities we just aren't taught to use our noses so
         | that muscle doesn't get exercised.
        
           | hearsathought wrote:
           | > I think in cities we just aren't taught to use our noses so
           | that muscle doesn't get exercised.
           | 
           | We are taught to use our noses for different things. Smell of
           | piss, feces, gas, garbage, etc.
        
             | slfnflctd wrote:
             | Don't forget vomit. For me, it's the worst smell by far in
             | certain population dense areas. I will go to great lengths
             | to avoid it.
        
           | DarkNova6 wrote:
           | I actually grew up in the province and later moved to a city.
           | Can't say it had a noticeable affect on me _shrug_.
        
       | kayo_20211030 wrote:
       | > "The most crucial finding of this data set is really to
       | appreciate that there are differences in olfactory perception,"
       | 
       | Honestly, I'm shocked to learn that. Shocked!
        
         | kayo_20211030 wrote:
         | Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Quanta plumbing the shallows of science
         | again. PBS does a better job, and they have less money,
        
       | jcynix wrote:
       | The sense oft smell must be one of the oldest senses, think of
       | small entities swimming in some "primordial" soup looking for
       | nutritious stuff.
       | 
       | What I found most interesting to learn about our sense of smell
       | some years ago is that "We Smell With Every Organ In Our Body,
       | Not Just Our Noses" cf.
       | https://www.ravishly.com/2014/10/16/smell-nose-olfactory-rec...
        
         | randycupertino wrote:
         | I read an interesting book about smell and it mentioned that
         | smell is the only sense that bypasses the thalamus, which is
         | why smells often trigger emotions before you recognize the
         | associated conscious thought. Olfactory signals go straight
         | from the nose to our limbic system. It was The Forgotten Sense
         | by Jonas Olofsson.
         | 
         | Also the "humans can recognize 10,000 unique scents" is
         | outdated, a modern study by Science found humans can
         | discriminate over a trillion smells!
         | 
         | Interesting stuff.
         | 
         | Personally I have been getting very into different perfumes
         | lately, it's a very fun hobby! I love getting the different
         | samples and finding new unique ones I love. My current favorite
         | is Prada Infusion de Rhubarbe, it's clean, tangy and fresh with
         | rhubarb and citrus. My partner got me a perfume sample pack for
         | Christmas and it's been so much fun trying new ones each
         | morning :)
        
       | cmrx64 wrote:
       | smell isn't integrated in the thalamus with other sensory
       | streams, it does something else entirely
        
       | FloorEgg wrote:
       | I used to get migraines and sometimes they would be triggered by
       | smells.
       | 
       | Thankfully I have thad a migraine in over 10 years.
        
       | memoriesofsmell wrote:
       | Two anecdotes to contribute here: First, due to allergic
       | rhinitis, my sense of smell was pretty muted for much of my life,
       | only in the last few years when I developed a taste for wines did
       | I start making a serious effort to manage that better and develop
       | my sens of smell. It's been quite a pleasure to do.
       | 
       | Secondly, a friend of mine keeps (kept?) drawers full of jars
       | with different things in them that had specific smells associated
       | with them. In the same way someone might keep a photo album, she
       | kept a collection of smells which would vividly recall a memory
       | for her. To this day I still find that absolutely fascinating
       | that she was able to do that so reliably.
       | 
       | The contrast of her experiences with smell vs mine was quite
       | astounding to me and something I've thought about a lot since
       | meeting her a few years ago.
        
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