Hey everybody.
It is Trina here, Ms. Beautyphile, and we're live from the Monell Chemical Senses Center
in Philly.
I'm here with Dr. Pamela Dalton.
You may have recognized her from a video beforehand and she is giving me a test today.
What?
We're gonna test my sense of smell.
If there's anyone out there right now, hello.
Welcome, welcome.
So, tell me, what am I going to be doing with this test?
Okay, so what you're going to be doing is what we think the olfactory system is important
for.
Okay.
Which is to be able to figure out what you're smelling when you walk through the world.
Oh my God.
I'm gonna be terrible at this, you guys.
I'm gonna be terrible.
I don't think my sense of smell is really acute.
So, let's hope for the best.
Well, we'll see.
Okay.
Okay, alright.
So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take these special pens that have odors inside them.
Okay.
And I'm gonna sort of wave it under your nose and you can see if you can smell it.
Sorry, that was a little bit of an embarrassing reaction.
Hi @vonok, nice to see you here.
We are doing a sniff test right now and I don't know if you saw my reaction to this
one, but this is very, woo, it's very spirited.
I would say it's menthol, maybe, like spearmint?
No, okay.
Give me some options to choose from here.
- Okay, would you say it was closer to orange, blackberry, strawberry, or pineapple?
- Oh, that's wild.
None of those.
Can I smell it one more time?
None of those smelled like that to me.
Um, I would say pineapple?
- Yes.
- Oh, okay, phew.
Oh my goodness.
This is gonna be so hard.
I'm sweating it out.
Just for you guys who have joined, I am getting a scent test to see if I can identify certain
scents and for the first one, I didn't do so well.
I smelled mint when it was actually pineapple.
Why is that the case?
What happened there?
- I'm not sure, but you know it's very hard for us when you don't have choices.
Okay.
When you have to think about whether this could be one of a thousand things you've smelled...
Right.
...to actually link it to that identity.
Okay.
Generally, when we smell things, we remember where we smelled them.
Right.
Or who wore that perfume or where we were when we smelled coconut for example.
Right.
At the beach when we were putting sunscreen on right?
Yeah and this makes sense because I don't know if you guys saw my other video that I
did with the perfumer at in -cosmetics.
She created a space fragrance and when I smelled that fragrance, it smelled like space, which
was amazing, but I couldn't identify the key components that made that space smell.
Right, right.
So this is the challenge that I'm still having.
That's very common, very common.
Okay.
And even with complex mixtures, it's very hard for us to figure out what is actually
in there unless you're a trained perfumer or a chef, like you go out to eat in a restaurant
and you taste this divine sauce.
Right.
And you sit there thinking, well, I know I'm not gonna get the recipe from the chef, but
can I make this at home?
What is in here?
Right.
That's really hard for us to do as humans.
Okay.
But we're very good at smelling, so.
Got it.
So, let's try...
Let's try another one...number two, alright...without you knowing anything about what it might be
and then I will give you the four choices and you can see if you do better than that.
Okay, this is a very light scent.
They all smell like mint to me.
I don't know.
Alright, well take a look at this.
In my defense, I just got a cold on Thursday.
Okay.
So maybe that's why everything smells dull.
Oh, okay, okay.
So, what she's done is she's given me some examples here.
I'm gonna hold them up.
So these are things that I could be experiencing and I have to guess.
So we have smoke, which it wasn't.
We have leather, which it's not.
We have glue, glue?
We have glue and we have grass.
Oh gosh.
I would say grass?
It really is leather.
It's leather?
Oh my God.
I am the worst.
This is terrible.
But try it again now knowing that and I think it'll come into better range.
Oh, you know what?
It's very faint and now I can smell it.
Yes, yes, yes.
Alright you guys.
It's like a pattern match right?
You're smelling something that's activating your olfactory system, but you've got to get
a pattern for something that you don't smell all the time to match it to something that
you have smelled before Okay. to be able to do that.
- Hey @hygienicelementsllc, how are you doing?
If you guys have any questions for Dr. Dalton, definitely let me know.
I am bombing this smell test right now.
I'm gonna blame it on the cold, but you know maybe it's just that my sniffer isn't trained.
Now you were saying people can actually train and make their sense of smell more acute.
Is that correct?
Absolutely.
Okay.
If you tried this every day, I guarantee you, you would start nailing it.
Really?
Yes.
Okay, I'm gonna take this home with me, your sniff samples and I'm gonna try to start nailing
it.
I'm gonna be trained by the next time and be prepared for this.
This one might be a little easier.
You might even be able to get it without looking at the options.
Okay.
This is bananas.
Yes!
I totally smelled this one.
Okay, I got one, bananas.
This is the banana, yeah, banana smell.
And so here were some of my options here.
Very easy.
Thank you @hygienicelementsllc.
I know, I finally got one right, right?
Thank you for celebrating with me.
Okay, do you want to try maybe like two more?
Does that feel good?
- Yeah, two more.
Okay.
That sounds good.
Okay, you missed what's going on really fast.
Okay, so what Dr. Dalton is doing is she is testing my sense of smell, which apparently
isn't very good and there's two things that they're looking at here.
One is can I actually smell something or do I even identify that there's an odor, right.
Because there's some people that can't smell.
That's right.
Or have trouble smelling.
Yes.
What is that called?
Well, it's called anosmia if you have no ability to smell.
Okay, anosmia, is that correct?
Anosmia.
Okay.
And if you are impaired and then we call that hyposmia.
So it's reduced sensitivity to smell.
I see.
Yes.
And what influences that?
Is it like sickness?
A lot of things.
Okay.
Number one, as we grow older, our sense of smell declines just like our vision and our
hearing.
Everything declines as we get older.
Yes, yes.
Wow.
And colds, things that block.
Could this be one reason?
Sorry to interrupt.
Could this be one reason why, I don't know, this probably is a horrible stereotype, but
they say like sometimes older women and perfumes and the perfume is really strong is because
for them it smells okay, but maybe for people whose sense of smell is more acute, it's too
strong.
Absolutely.
Whoa, okay, there.
- Number one is they probably where the same or very similar scents all the time.
Yes, I see too.
That's interesting.
- So they get adapted to it, but also their ability to smell is less acute than someone
who might be 20 or 30 years old.
Right.
So, you know, I was essentially a prisoner of my mother's perfume addiction.
A prisoner?
She would use the same scent and she would spray it so much because she wanted to experience
it.
I see.
And she couldn't smell it well anymore and then I would get in a car with her and I would
be absolutely asphyxiated.
Oh my goodness.
And so she had adapted to it, no big deal for her, but you hadn't.
No big deal.
And I hadn't, yes.
Okay, I'm ready to try another one.
Alright, this one you might actually get without the clues.
Okay, before I smell it, we're gonna read @hygienicelementsllc's question.
I recall a nasal with zinc have the same negative effect?
I guess what she's talking about is it has a disruptive ability on your sense of smell.
Right.
Interestingly, nobody has ever been able to actually demonstrate that in a study.
Okay.
But it's very common for people to experience that after using the zinc nasal spray.
Interesting.
But we've never been able to actually pin it down in a study.
Right.
Not that many studies have been done.
And that's the interesting thing about science is there's you know some stuff out there that
we just haven't been able to pin down yet.
We're still, we're still learning about our sense of smell and what some of the issues
are and, you know, a lot of science is coming to light.
Is that correct?
Absolutely, absolutely.
Oh @supernovastylesciencenews, thank you for joining us.
It's good to see you here.
I am doing a sniff test and apparently my sniffer is not too good.
Hopefully, I'm gonna have to develop some other sense.
You rocked the last one, so.
Okay, I can kind of smell this one already and I worry what I'm gonna say because I said
it like a million times.
Alright, let me smell.
Is it peppermint?
Yes.
Oh my gosh, finally!
Finally I got one right!
So the options were, let me show the options.
So this is how I guess they normally test.
We said that one thing was can you smell?
The other thing was can you identify what that smell is?
So how would you rate me so far when it comes to...
Well, no, you definitely can smell, but this is a really difficult task and generally when
we do this, we don't do what I was doing to you, which was give you the pen to smell.
You mean humiliate me in front of people?
Yes, exactly.
But we give them these options.
Okay.
And that makes it much easier because now you only have to compare what you're smelling
with four things.
Right.
Instead of a thousand things that it could possible be.
Right, so let me update the latecomers here.
So what happened was I just smelled this.
I identified it correctly as peppermint, but there was a bunch of options that I could
choose from.
And without this I would've been totally lost though because it's very difficult to identify
a smell if you don't have the options unless you are trained to do so, right?
Yes.
So your nose, you have to develop your nose.
You have to develop that connection between the pattern of what you're smelling and the
identity match in your brain.
Right, right.
And I'd be interested in hearing how many of you guys think you would rock this test.
I'm certainly not rocking it, but tell me, do you guys think that you have an acute sense
of smell?
Do your friends tell you that you can smell these interesting things?
Have you encountered any weird situations that you want to ask Dr. Dalton since we're
here?
We're gonna do one more.
So prepare your questions if you have one 'cause we're gonna have to shoot out of here
in the next like two minutes.
Uh oh.
She's gonna pull out a hard one.
I see her focusing.
Very nervous.
See I still have to check myself to be sure.
This is really fascinating though.
I had no idea that there was so much involved in scent.
I've been learning a lot about it lately.
Alright, you know, and I learned...
I think I just got a hint of what that one was.
I learned that a professional perfumer when they get to the mastery level is called a
nose.
Yeah.
- Which is a compliment.
Yes.
Do you have a name for somebody who achieves, what is it, they've mastered smell?
- No we actually don't.
In the lab.
I mean we call people super smellers.
Oh!
But, you know, that could also refer to the odors that they give off themselves, you know?
Right, so I'm gonna smell this and we're gonna take our last question here.
It's from @supernovastylesciencenews.
She says, "I think I could do good.
"I can smell things usually very well and identify them."
Oh my goodness, well, we'll have to sit down at some point and we'll have to do a test
now that I know how it's done.
So you can test this at home with your friends too.
Alright, let me give this one a shot.
Okay, you know, motor oil?
I don't know.
It is, it hits you, like it goes through your nose and it shoots into your brain and if
anyone's ever had a headache while smelling perfume, I imagine that this is what that
feels like.
Alright, very sharp.
Let me help you out here.
Oh I think I know what it is already though, now that I've got my options.
So these were my options.
You guys saw my reaction.
These are the very unsavory options.
Onion, garlic, sauerkraut, and carrot.
Okay, I think it's garlic.
It is totally garlic.
And now that we've identified it, I've smelled this like going through Gilroy in California,
right.
Yes.
The garlic capital of the world.
Right, right, right.
It smells like this, but when you have it in concentrated form, it is like punch in
the face.
Oh my goodness, wow.
But it's also the kind of odor that's very context dependent.
Okay.
Because at dinner time when you walk into your kitchen, this is a good odor, right?
That's crazy!
That's true!
Garlic can be a good smell, but here it was totally...
But if you open your bedroom window in the morning and it wafts into your bedroom at
7:00 A.M.
- Right, yes.
It's totally not something you'd want to smell.
It's just totally wrong.
Right, right.
Yeah, you don't want to kiss anybody with like garlic mouth, right?
Exactly.
Ugh.
So it's the same thing.
Okay, so perception plays a role, right, or any experiences that you've have with it before,
but also what was it perception.
And then also concentration.
Yes, concentration, the intensity.
And the context, yes, I'm learning.
Things that are good in one context can be bad in another.
Right.
Oh my God, this was fantastic.
I want to thank everyone who's joined us today.
Unfortunately we got to cut out right now.
Oh, @thebrotherofbreathing, you're just joining in.
We're just leaving.
We just did a sniff test, but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna save this video so you can
watch it later.
Lots of interesting stuff about fragrances and scent and you're just gonna feel like
you know a ton after this.
It was very educational for me.
Thank you so much for doing this!
I had so much fun!
Thank you.
Alright, we'll see you guys later.
Bye!