How do we smell? - Rose Eveleth
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2024
- View full lesson: ed.ted.com/lessons/how-do-we-s...
An adult human can distinguish up to 10,000 odors. You use your nose to figure out what to eat, what to buy and even when it's time to take a shower. But how do the molecules in the air get translated into smells in your brain? Rose Eveleth charts the smelly journey through your olfactory epithelium and explains why scent can be so subjective.
Lesson by Rose Eveleth, animation by Igor Coric.
As someone who suffers from anosmia, either congenital or acquired by an illness as a newborn, this really intrigues me. The fact that people can smell really confuses me.
Forgive the reply to this old comment, but I'm always intrigued by people with sensory deprivation. It makes me want to learn more about how they perceive others that possess their missing senses.
So, what's it like? Do other people just seem to have psychic powers that tell them there's a gas leak? Or when someone farted? Or what Mom's cooking for dinner? And if you can't smell, does it make you immune to smells that would nauseate or physically harm others? I'm assuming it doesn't make you immune to gas, as you'd likely still be able to tell if you were losing oxygen.
Dachimotsu No, we don't have psychic powers lol, I've heard it's similar to what a smeller feels like with a blocked nose, except I can breath out of my nose. The only way I know if someone has farted is if I hear it, or peoples reactions afterward 😂 Chemicals and gases that only make you feel unwell due to their strong smell wouldn't affect me, but if they have physical symptoms then they likely will affect me, it isn't the smell that affects you, that's just a side effect. Like bath salts, I get a 'minty sensation' up my nose, and my eyes water, but I don't smell a thing.
I have a bad sense of smell, but I can smell things if they are strong enough.
Aimee Loftus illiterate
interesting: how do you experience taste? do you like spicy or very sweet foods?
i love the narrator. She has a sweet voice.
she sounds kind of like Vi Hart :D :D
🤔🤔🤔but low volume
She goes so fast!
her voice smells good
Pervets
I've olfactomania, I'm obsessed with smells. I recognize someone by how they smell long before I know what there name is even what they look like.
This seems like a super power
You're given superhero name "olfactoWoman"
Are you...a werewolf?! :o
its all
about the Terps
I am so glad she took the time to explain anosmia. I was born with it, and it’s something that many people don’t know exists, or refuse to believe it exists.
Hi i am a Korean boy
@@NOName-bf4up What?
So I lost my sense of smell few months before covid was announced, after getting over what I think it was covid. January when covid was discovered or what ever all over the news I was waking up from a come, brain trauma and doctors saying my brain moved and moved some receptors and it hard for them to regrow in the same hole but idk if I ever got my sense of smell back in the first time before my accident
I was born with it. I also don't have the sinuse pockets behind my cheeks and my ENT thinks that's connected. Although, I do occasionally get "phantom smells" of a very faint scent.
Love this video! I'm obsessed with smell because I was born with out it...thank you for making me understand it better than before :)
?난 한국인 ?i am a Korean
@@NOName-bf4up we all know koreans dont exist. nice try biden.
You were born without a sense of smell?
@@NOName-bf4up LMFAO
@@NOName-bf4up wha- I- huh- I don't- whaaaaaaaat.
SUper interesting. I knew that people have different sensitivity to smells. Didn't know there was scientific terminology for it =)
네~~^^
Are you still alive
Hi Ted-Ed! If possible, I would love a detailed video about our response to smells (just like how we get the urge to vomit when we smell something so bad like surströmming). The history, the biology, everything that will explain it will be great. Thanks! I really love your videos though I watch on Facebook more than here.
I knew it would take a whole bottle of wine to find the best video on the internet.
MH3D a bowl for me
Hahahahahahahahahah
I recently had quite a bad cold and for about 2 weeks I couldn't smell anything which was very strange. As stated, food didn't actually have as much taste as normal, and fizzy drinks just had a fizzy texture with no taste :)
Supreme animation and explanation. Keep it up!
It's so weird and amazing at the same time that our brains can transform electrical pulses into what we know as psychological "senses"
I just suddenly had this question, so I wanted to find an explanation. I actually searched a different channel name, but Kurzgesagt didn't have a video on this topic. Happy that TED-Ed does.
Kurzgesagt? Oh yeah that guy who gave me insomnia for a few days...
@@bellazonna6510 wait till you listen to Micheal from Vsause1
This video was marvellous, also fun the animation. I loved the Ufo-Neuron!
Great video! I just wish you mentioned the vibrational state of the molecule that is being sniffed dictates how the receptor is activated. This is one of the major reasons esters smell so different from alcohols.
Damn when she sed take a deep breath i did and i forgot i was in the toilet
i n
@@topaz6139 in the toilet O.O
thank you this explained your sense of smell so well and helps me a lot with my research thank u
I'm glad you mentioned people who can't smell, I was born without it and stuff tastes dry, I often NEED some sort of added flavour in large doses to even enjoy some foods
I've lived with anosmia for years since I had brain surgery as a kid. Really makes me wonder if the receptors in my nose are still being replaced/if my body still has the capacity to synthesize new ones. Video really makes me wish I smelled more things when I was younger haha
Thank you for putting multiple language options for the captions :)
This really helps me for my project.
randomly came to watch this because i realized i didn’t know how smell worked - amazingly made video.
The end where she says "be a little more thankful that you can" hits a lot differently after COVID
Really good short video that explains the sense of smell.
Thank you for uploading!
Oh, I thought this video was about how we smell but it's about how we smell things.
Same here. Misleading title lol
Tim Kasem how do we smell
I love the graphics!
Excellent video!
I love these Ted animations.
I love these video series.
I'm not as thankful when somebody farts.
fart contains bits of fecal particles in the fart. would you rather breathe it all in or avoid as soon as you smell it? be thankful
*****
I think he was being sarcastic, but good response lol.
Experiment to lose your sense of smell for a while and you will be
@@StanleyKingChanit doesn’t
way of presentation is nice.
I love the bizarre animation. Where did the term "olfactory" come from? Maybe a scientist a long time ago named it that after he smelled the stink from an old abandoned factory. Maybe a paper factory, which uses some sort of detergent that has a horrible, sickly smell that drove me crazy in the 1960's when my family went camping in Georgia for two weeks. There were a lot of those factories in the area.
had to watch this for an assignment, thats when you know its good info
this vid was in 2013 and it said that scientists don't know why our olfactory epithelium is pigmented, so did they find out the reason, now in 2019?
or atleast in 2021?
Wonderfully made!!!
I've never heard of savory either and wonder if savory = umami too. But wonderful animation and for someone aspiring to be a neuroscientist, I loved the little-known facts and concepts.
I've had no sense of smell or taste for three days now, and i've realised just how important they are. I can't smell anything at all, can't even taste my morning cup of tea. It's very bizarre, I feel bad for people that have had to suffer for years!
hi, i am 16 years old and i cant smell anything probably since birth, i am surfing the internet for answers because i'd like to smell at least something before i die!
Aww, I do hope you get to! x
PdoubleO P hey! I am too. I never smelt anything since birth, though I still have the ability to taste.
+PdoubleO P It's like tasting things by breathing through your nose, but the taste is much more subtle. Good luck with it though.
Tan simpatica ella! ojala todas las clases fueran tan entretenidas. cool girl!
This is a great video!
Thank you for awesome content!!!
I like this one. Thank you.
Well explained!!!
Yeah poor me because of my many allergies my sense of smell has degraded a lot but food still tastes good so yeah
Greyjay254 Its obviously a myth that smell and taste are together :L For one, you dont categorize them as one sense in the first place. And also, when people hold their nose, *THEY AREN'T BLOCKING THEIR SMELL SENSE, JUST STOPPING THEIR BREATHING* lol
Charlie The Cartoonist good point lol
Greyjay254 Unless you cut off the nerves that help you smell and then you cant taste anything all of a sudden... Theeen theres no link :L
Charlie The Cartoonist very true.
Greyjay254 Wait... also we have taste buds, and there's different kinda buds in your nose that capture different smells.... And different parts of the brain for smell and taste. You get the point anyways :L
I'm thankful that I can smell...
*sniffs deep into my doritos bag
nice and informative video please keep going. Good Luck
My sense of smell is several times stronger than most people. It's been a curse my whole life. It's so strong I can smell a scent on just about everyone. There have been people who's natural scent made me sick. Every building I go into has a smell. The smell of food lingering in a building bothers me. So do people that have been sweating or just smoked a cigarette.
that can be a good thing, you can get more information of things
you should do something like whisky/wine/food tasting
Same here!! Every one say's "Your sense of smelling thing is like a dog's wtf"
Few years late, but same deal here but with my tastebuds
Oh anatomy ❤️ great video
amazing video!
These videos make me happy
After watching this, i feel like a dog.
Well no wonder a lot of us couldn't taste anything when we lost our sense of smell during covid.
And I'm highly sensitive to smell as well, it's a nightmare when I smell cigarettes or strong perfumes😣
correction; olfactory neurons aren't the only ones that go through neurogenesis on a regular basis, gustatory neurons as well
This animation is awesome, my favorite type of presentation.
I can't smell a lot of things. But I can still smell stuff. I have a super complicated nose.
KaleaStar Same lol I have allergies and asthma, so my body works weird :L
i can smell your comment
Amazing... explains a lot too..
My online class tr let me watch this and it really interesting and the narrator it really smart
This is actually really cool I am watching this for my school but this is interesting
I always knew that smell and taste went together in some way I always pinch my nose when I have to eat something I don't like it works every time😉
I heard T-rex had two noses essentially, and they could triangulate their prey by calculating the different times at which the scent hit each nose. Like smelling in stereo, or with depth.
wow , wrote the lesson and narrated , good job Rose Eveleth :)
Thanks!
That explain why I always breath out while chewing when eating delicious food... to savor it.
Great video, how on Earth does smell evolve before the other senses?
Every time when teded talk about our senses.
TED-Ed : You people better get thankful
Love your videos
who else is here cuz
A. quarantine
B. they, in fact, cannot smell
Very helpful video! Thanks!
네 알겠습니다
네~~ 댓글 감사드려요
very well put :D
i had temporary anosmia when i had covid, fortunatly it returned fully within a week - but i couldn't taste more than sweet - sour - bitter - salty - savoury for a week. my sister's sense of smell never fully recovered, and she can't taste or smell citrus properly...
Do u know mavel?
Great video
Her voice looks exactly as sweet as the character 😊
Great olfactory clinic:)
I lost my sense of smell after a hit&run accident. The taste thing is oh so true but you get used to it now i can eat things i used to hate but cant taste things i used to love. Miss smelling people too, this all happened while i was dating my ex and i became very disconnected after i lost my smell, still am to everybody
nice job guys! :)
After a REALLY bad concussion several years ago, i lost most of my ability to smell. There are a handful of things i can still smell (rubbing alcohol, lavender, oranges, blood) But that's it
Can you smell everything now?
@@pam9944 not really. Like every now and then I'll be able to smell something new which is odd, but for theoat part I still have no sense of smell
If it wasn't for the hot fresh smell of salty buttery popcorn that permeates every Cinema entry way I think they would sell a lot fewer snack at the bar.
Popcorn doesn't taste nearly as good as it smells, I fall for it every time xD
Correction suggestion: At 1'53" the mandarin(Taiwan) translation means tonsils(扁桃腺) which should be amygdala(杏仁體) instead.
nice video but there is a mistake , actually olfactory nerve fibers project directly to the cortex without relay on thalamus as they mentioned in the video
i get it but how do molecules chain through the air? i mean i can understand the energy of heat dispersing said molecules from bacon in a pan... but how the hell does perfume disperse itself through the air once it's on the body? i mean you would think that after you move away from the application site, the perfume itself doesn't have any energy to shed or propel molecules, yet if someone is walking down a sidewalk 3 hours after they've applied perfume, i can still smell it... how the hell does that work? is there just THAT many molecules left over after 3 hours that they're still being shed into the air?
Sean Lewis I know this is late but that's the answer I'm looking for
Jove Soros same
Yeah, it's just little molecules floating around in the air, in the same way that dust does, but on a smaller scale. The more molecules something gives off, the smellier it is, and obviously perfumes are designed to give off smells for a long period of time, so...
Since perfumes are kind of alcoholic and contain ester, they evaporate easily and can remain in your nose and in the air for quite a long time. Alcohol can evaporate at room temperature, so u can imagine that perfumes evaporate at nearly the same temperature.. To sum it up , perfumes kinda work like alcohol does , but since they are mixed with other chemicals and fixatives, they last longer and smell better.
it works the same way as with the bacon. The heat of your body intensifies the diffusion of the odor molecules so that the parfume is easier to smell. Thats why you often apply parfume to your wrists for example, because they are often warm from the blood, that flows through there.
very interesting thank you
Please tell me this is a full series on all our senses (all 9 of them, or however many).
Thank you for a great video!) But I have a question: how hormones could be felt by animals? For example, how dogs can smell the noradrenaline hormone in a big distance? The hormones can be released through skin and reached the nose of dogs in the form of molecules??
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Hey there. A few references could be useful, for instance how do you know that molecules actually bind selectively to receptors in the olfaction process?
I've never seen a trace of evidence for that ^^
Sweet voice
2:52 R.I.P. Piggy
How do molecules that bring odor detach from olfactory receptor? I mean when molecule binds to receptor and activates olfactory neuron, how does it detaches after? Or does it just sit there?
Now I know what my not smelling anything is called thanks! :)
7 year old knowledge is still fresh and uptodate
How can we convert odor into a frequency that the sensors able to read?
Also dextromethorphan makes smells really phenomonal and pronounced
I love this
This is good for my homework
while I was eavesdropping, I heard my classmate said that he cannot smell anything even if its fight in front of his nose. at first I didn't believe it then I watched this video
Smell, the most underrated sense.
I love my olfactory epithelium when I'm not sitting next to a public bathroom.
I've got anosmia. Can't smell anything since birth. I actually just noticed the taste thing about a year ago. I go by texture of food instead of taste.
Can somebody clarify for me why the video mentions that smell goes to the thalamus but then it states that smell does not go through the relay center like all the other senses. The thalamus is the relay center, isn't it?
Nice video, but you could slow down a bit; a semester of public speaking at SCF hammered into me the importance of speaking slowly enough to be understood, especially since I naturally tend to speak too fast myself.
I got sick a few months ago and after I got better it still literally took me about a month to be able to smell anything again. It was awful!!! I couldn't taste anything and I swear I think it impaired my hearing too.
You did explain well how our bodies perceive smell, but I'd really like to see a video where you explain what exactly is smell... What the heck is an aroma?
I'm anosmic, the part about only tasting the basic sweet, sour, etc is true (for ex, I usually can't tell the difference between chicken, beef, oriental, etc ramen, and if I somehow did notice I wouldn't be able to pinpoint what the taste was, just that it was "different"). We do often have a heightened sensitivity to the texture of food though. People ask me all the time if I can taste, the answer is yes, it's just a different way of tasting.
The concept of smell is weird, my family has tried explaining it to me with little luck (I was seriously floored when my sister said one time that apples smelled.....). The only thing my nose "smells" is fumes (like with really strong paint or rubbing alcohol), which really aren't smells at all. It's more like a physical presence punching the inside of my nose......
Sometimes it's nice, like when on a car ride we pass by a cow farm and the manure smell is bad, but it's more inconvenient than not. Everyone raves about fresh bread and chocolate chip cookies, I wish I could smell those, and I also worry about things like not smelling the gas if the gas stove is leaking. Appreciate your fully functional nose people, not all of us have one. :/
yea I know how you feel I have seasonal allergy which mostly block off my ability to smell so for about 1/2 of the year I can't smell anything while the other half of the year I can.
chipfairy08 I think that's probably even harder to deal with than no smell at all, because you know what you're missing then. :/