United States: A recent study has revealed that our two nostrils have their own sense of smell.
The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and the Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, have studied the neural processes underlying odour processing in the human olfactory system and how the brain handles odour information from different nostrils.
“Despite extensive work on odor responses in the olfactory system, relatively little is known about how information from the two nostrils is integrated and differentiated in the human olfactory system,” scientists wrote in their research paper.
They examined 10 epilepsy patients who already had electrodes implanted in their brains. Subjects were tested on one of three scents or pure air (control) in each trial, either through one nostril, the other nostril, or both simultaneously.
After a few seconds, participants identified the scent and specified which nostril (left, right, or both) they used. Simultaneously, researchers recorded the brain’s response using electrodes.
The research paper titled “Odour representations from the two nostrils are temporally segregated in human piriform cortex,” was published in the journal Current Biology.
The researchers also noticed that the brain activity was not identical but similar, while the nose presented with the same smells.
According to the paper, “odor information arising from the two nostrils is temporally segregated in the human piriform cortex,” write the researchers in their published paper.
“Our findings have important implications for odor coding in the olfactory system and provide evidence that the human PC maintains distinct representations of odor information arising from each nostril through temporal segregation,” as per the researchers.
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