No, really. What would you do? What scents would you miss the most? Freshly laundered sheets? A certain perfume or cologne worn by someone you care about? Mom/dad/Aunt Jane’s meatloaf? The roses in your garden? While I might miss my favorite perfume, I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t miss: subway body odors. But what about [...]

At seventeen I discovered the perfume that would become my signature scent. It’s a warm, rich, inviting fragrance[i] that reminds me (and hopefully others) of a rose garden in full bloom. Despite this fullness, it’s light enough to wear all day and it’s been in the background of many of my life experiences. It announces [...]

First impressions matter. This may not come as much of a surprise, but just how quickly we form impressions, and which cues we use to make such rapid judgements may very much surprise you. Take the face. Superstar social psychologist Nalini Ambady (**see below) and her colleagues found that judgements of traits relating to power (competence, dominance, [...]

When attending events, like scientific conferences, some people take copious notes with pen and paper. More and more people live-blog or live-tweet such events. But some people do something different – they live-draw the events. Perrin Ireland is an artist who does this – turning the words, sounds, sights and smells of the event into [...]

Until recent decades, the brain was viewed as static. The accepted scientific view was that after early childhood few changes occurred in the connections between neurons and no new brain cells appeared. A new, dynamic model of the brain has emerged from this fixed model. This transition was marked, first by scientific acceptance of the [...]

I used to work in Edinburgh’s Butterfly and Insect World. While I was there, my favourite animal was not the chameleon, which changed colour when it was angry. Nor was it the royal pythons that loved human body heat, and would sometimes squeeze unnervingly tight. No, my favourite exhibit was the leafcutter ant. We had [...]

This is a jumping spider, and it is unusual in more ways than just its looks. The jumping spider, Evarcha culicivora, or the ‘vampire spider’ is the only animal which chooses its prey based on what the latter has just eaten: it attacks mosquitoes that have recently sucked blood, rather than other types of food.1 [...]

Have you ever wondered what makes you right- or left-handed? Well, in humans and other mammals, the brain is divided down the middle, or ‘lateralized’. One of the effects of this is that people can be right-handed or left-handed (having better motor skill with one hand or the other). This is because one half of [...]

Weakening eyesight can be sharpened with lenses, and impaired hearing can be improved with aids. What about a failing sense of smell? Detecting and distinguishing the floral bouquet of fresh honey or the miasma of bad lunchmeat might not seem quite as critical for day-to-day existence as sight or hearing. But what the nose knows [...]

White is a mixture, made by a combination of signals at equal intensity across a perceptual space. White light can be split up into all the colors of the visible spectrum, and white noise covers a range of frequencies within the audible range. Our other senses don’t have as clearly defined ranges of perception. We [...]

Before there was sound in movies there was smell. In 1906, a Pennsylvania movie theater soaked a wad of cotton wool in rose oil and placed it in front of a fan. When a newsreel about the Rose Bowl played, they turned on the fan and the smell of roses wafted over the theater. Audience [...]

Following on my last blog, here are more telling tidbits from the March/April issue of Scientific American Mind. Smelling the past. I don’t give much thought to odors, unless I have to purge one from the kitchen or car. So I had never considered the possibility that my ability to smell affects how I think [...]

Of all our senses smell is still the most enigmatic, and chemists’ relationship with this sense usually begins quite early in their training, much before they learn to appreciate the wonderful complexities of odor. And complex it is; while the other senses succumbed much earlier, it took until 2004 for a Nobel Prize to be [...]

The Caribbean hermit crabs in Anna-Sara Krång’s laboratory are no picky eaters. They are eager to gobble down any fruit, nuts, fish or coconut flakes that comes their way. But above all else, these culinary connoisseurs prefer peanut flips. These snacks are always the first to disappear down their gullets when feeding time comes around. [...]