The Home Page Sense of height Sense of Smell Sense of Touch Sense of Taste Sense of Hearing The Glossary

Take The Quiz!!! E-mail Us Activities Your Sense of Smell Have you ever wondered what you smell when you "smell the roses" in the spring t ime? What makes a smell is something that is too small to see with your eyeball alone. It is even too small to be seen with a microscope! What you smell are tin y things called odor particles. Millions of them are floating around waiting to be sniffed by your nose! You smell these odors through your nose which is almost like a huge cave built t o smell, moisten, and filter the air you breathe. As you breathe in, the air ent ers through your nostrils which contain tiny little hairs that filter all kinds of things trying to enter your nose, even bugs! These little hairs are called ci lia and you can pretend that they sweep all the dirt out of the nasal cavity, wh ich is the big place the air passes through on it's way to the lungs. After pass ing through the nasal cavity, the air passes through a thick layer of mucous to the olfactory bulb. There the smells are recognized because each smell molecule fits into a nerve cell like a lock and key. Then the cells send signals along yo ur olfactory nerve to the brain. At the brain, they are interpreted as those swe et smelling flowers or that moldy cheese. Picture of the Nose Our sense of smell is connected really well to our memory. For instance, the sme ll of popcorn can remind you of being at the movies with a friend or the smell o f tar can remind you of riding in a car to the beach. Humans have seven primary odors that help them determine objects. Listed below a re the seven odors. Odor Example Pictures Camphoric Mothballs Picture Musky Perfume/Aftershave Picture Roses Floral Picture Pepperminty Mint Gum Picture Etheral Dry Cleaning Fluid Picture Pungent Vinegar Picture Putrid Rotten Eggs Picture Sensational Facts Dogs have 1 million smell cells per nostril and their smell cells are 100 times larger than humans! Humans use insect warning chemicals, called pheromones, to keep away pes ky insects! People who cannot smell have a condition called Anosmia. If your nose is at its best, you can tell the difference between 4000-10 ,000 smells! As you get older, your sense of smell gets worse. Children are more like ly to have better senses of smell than their parents or grandparents. Our sense of smell like our sense of taste is part of our chemosensory system, or th e chemical senses.

Specialized sensory cells, called olfactory sensory neurons, are found in a smal l patch of tissue high inside the nose. These cells connect directly to the brai n. Each olfactory neuron expresses one odor receptor. Microscopic molecules released by substances around us whether it s coffee brewing o r a pine forest stimulate these receptors. Once the neurons detect the molecules, they send messages to our brain, which identifies the smell. (Because there are more smells in the environment than there are receptors, a given molecule may st imulate a combination of receptors. This response is registered by the brain as a particular smell.) Smells reach the olfactory sensory neurons by way of two pathways. The first pat hway is through your nostrils. The second pathway is through a channel that conn ects the roof of the throat region to the nose. When we chew our food, aromas ar e released that access the olfactory sensory neurons through this channel. If th e channel is blocked, such as when our noses are stuffed up from a cold or flu, odors cannot reach the sensory cells and much of our ability to enjoy a food s fla vor is lost. In this way, our senses of smell and taste work closely together. W ithout the olfactory sensory neurons, familiar flavors such as chocolate or oran ges would be hard to distinguish. Our sense of smell is also influenced by something called the common chemical se nse. This sense involves thousands of nerve endings, especially on the moist sur faces of the eyes, nose, mouth, and throat. These nerve endings help us sense ir ritating substances such as the tear-inducing power of an onion or the refreshin g cool of peppermint. * sensory neurons each with a primary cilium * supporting cells between them * basal cells that divide regularly producing a fresh crop of sensory neuron s to replace those that die (and providing an exception to the usual rule that n eurons seldom are replaced). Smell depends on sensory receptors that respond to airborne chemicals. In humans , these chemoreceptors are located in the olfactory epithelium a patch of tissue about the size of a postage stamp located high in the nasal cavity. The olfacto ry epithelium is made up of three kinds of cells: