Olfaction and Odor

Objects

Odor
Sensation caused by one or more
volatile chemical compounds,
generally at low concentration
which is perceived by the sense
of olfaction ( The olfactory
System).
Can be pleasant (fragrance) or
unpleasant (stink).
Sensation depends on the
concentration (number of
molecules).
The smell enables pleasure, warn
about danger, locate mates, find
food or detect predators.

Olfactory
system
A Sensory System used for olfaction
i.e. sensing the smell which involves
the detection and perception of
chemicals floating in the air.
The olfactory sensory neurons act
as the sensory signaling cells of
odor.
This signal is then transmitted to
the olfactory bulb and further to
the brain areas like olfactory
cortex, hippocampus, amygdala

Anatomy of Olfactory System

Olfaction Signal Pathway

Types of odor

According to a recent research, humans can perceive the following 10 different categories
of smell -

Olfactory
Cues
Very important in sexual
reproduction
e.g. Female silkworm
releases the
pheromone
bombykol to attract males.
Maternal Bonding
Helpful in sensing danger
e.g fire, gas fumes, spoiled
food, etc

Defects in the Olfactory

system
Defects due to head injury, URI, sinusitis, prolonged
toxic exposure
Anosmia: The inability to perceiveodor or a lack
of functioningolfaction.
Hyposmia: Decreased ability to perceive odor.
Disosmia: distortion of the perception of smell.
Parosmia/ Cacosmia : Inability to identify an
objects natural smell.
Phantosmia: Imagining of unpleasant odor.
Impaired Olfaction is a characteristic of Parkinson
Disease.

Constraints in Olfaction
The influences of age on olfaction
Many factors contribute to the decrease in olfactory
function such as Loss of selectivity of receptor cells to odorants
Changes in neurotransmitter and neuromodulator
systems
Cumulative damage to the olfactory epithelium from
viral and other environmental factors
Decrements in mucosal metabolizing enzymes
Increased propensity for nasal disease

Current area of research

Olfaction could be a marker for psychiatric disorder(such as
depression) in humans.
The human olfactory receptor repertoire The identification and cloning of all functional human odorant
receptor genes is an important initial step in understanding
receptor-ligand specificity and combinatorial encoding of odorant
stimuli in human olfaction.

Artificial nose

References
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3916729/?
report=reader
http://hyposmia.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_system
Castro JB, Ramanathan A, Chennubhotla CS (2013) Categorical
Dimensions of Human Odor Descriptor Space Revealed by NonNegative Matrix Factorization. PLoS ONE 8(9): e73289.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0073289
http://
127.0.0.1:8081/plosone/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.007
3289
http://www.snipview.com/q/Glomerulus%20%28olfaction%29
https://protoplasmix.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/new-model-of-the-olf
actory-system
/