Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The science of taste and smell (with Steven Munger)

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The science of taste and smell (with Steven Munger) · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: All right, So I have a follow up question there.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: First of all, am I correct in interpreting your answer
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: is saying that bitter tastes are learned tastes and therefore
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: more sophisticated, And therefore we have scientific evidence that dark
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: chocolate is better than white chocolate, for example.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: That may be a stretch.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I'm taking that as a yes, and we're moving on.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Hi.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist. And I remember the
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: first time I smelled California. Hi.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: I'm Kelly wider Smith. I'm a parasitologist. And I remember
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: the first time I felt the wind on my feet
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: as I put on my sandals when I got to
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: California for my PhD interview, And I remember thinking, I'm
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: never going to leave here because it was snowy and
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: cold and miserable in Ohio, and I just loved that
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: I could wear my chockos. But I did end up leaving.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: But I don't remember the smell. What was the smell
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: of California?
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And now I'm worried the smell is wind from other
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: people's feet.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Well, that doesn't sound very nice, and I wonder so
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: many people are leaving California No.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I used to visit my grandfather in Los Angeles when
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I was a kid, and I remember walking out of
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the airplane into Los Angeles and smelling it, and in
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: my memory it's got sort of floral notes to it
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: and a little bit of sea salt or a little
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: bit of something from the ocean, because I learned in
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: this interview you can't actually smell salt, but there's definitely
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: something about California. And when I returned later to interview
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: for a job, I remember getting off the airplane, this
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: time in Orange County and having that same scent memory
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: transporting me back to my childhood in those summers in
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles and being like, hey, this could be a
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: place I live. I like it here.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember when we lived in Santa Barbara. I
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: did love the smell of Santa Barbara. But I think
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: that's mostly the smell of the ocean.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And what is the smell of the ocean. What are
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: we smelling in the ocean? Is it fish? Is at
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: al g Is it fish poop? What's going on there?
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: It's probably algae dia. Tom's Yeah, I don't know. Maybe
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: I don't want to know. Maybe I enjoy it more
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: not knowing what is your favorite scent?
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: My favorite sent that's a great question. I'm not sure
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: what my favorite is. But up there is the smell
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: of onions and garlic in olive oil. You know, when
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: you start cooking something delicious and that smell hits you,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, hmm. Sometimes I feel like they should make
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: up perfume, you know, because if I want on a
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: date with a lady and she smelled like onions and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: garlic and olive oil, I'd be like.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Ye, marry in a very wholesome way, right right, right,
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: here's the ring. Yeah, that is a good smell. That
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: always laughs because whenever he cooks I come in and go, oh,
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: it smells great. He's like, every time you say it
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: smells great, it's the same thing. And I'm like, well,
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: I'm consistent. It just still smells great. I love it.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: There you go, And so what are your favorite smells?
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Kelly love the smell right after a rain, and I
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: think that has something to do with bacteria and some
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: other stuff. I don't need to know. It just smells great.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: And then I'd love the smell of rosemary. One of
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: the things that I loved about the place that I
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: lived in Davis, California. Is that there was a rosemary
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: bush and every day before i'd go to school, I'd
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: pull a bit off and snap it and smell it
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: before I went out. And then lavender and eucalyptus. Those
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: are very relaxing smells for me.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: We have a whole hillside that's been colonized by a
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: rosemary bush, and when the sun hits it in the afternoon,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: that wafts over. It's like overpoweringly amazing.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's fantastic. Life is really good.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Sometimes life smells amazing.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it does. It didn't in grad school when I
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: was jumping into dump trucks full of dead fish. But
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: there have been plenty of good smelling parts of my
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: life and I'm in one of them now, which is great.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I'm very glad your life doesn't stink.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Thanks. Yeah, I'm glad your life doesn't stink either.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: So on today's show, we have my friend Steve Munger.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: He is an expert on smell and taste, and I
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: have asked him all sorts of stupid questions in the
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: like five plus years that I've known him, and I
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: am super excited to do that again today. So let's
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: go ahead and bring Steve on the show. Today's show
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: we have doctor Stephen Munger. He's professor and co director
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: of the Center for Smell and Taste Disorders at the
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: University of Virginia. Welcome to the show.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much, really join the invitation.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: I'm excited that I get the chance to chat with
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: you again. We've interacted a couple times about all sorts
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: of weird smell and taste topics, and I'm excited to
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: bring to our listeners your sort of weird knowledge on
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: smell and taste, weird and wonderful.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Thanks. Yeah, it was one of those instances back in
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: the day when Twitter was a lot more about finding
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: each other and getting interesting information. So it's a good result.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yes, Back when I used Twitter, we met Steve.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: I had a question for him for our book soonish
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: and we've been in touch since.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: So, Steve, You've got to ask do your family and
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: your kids describe your work as a professor of everything
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: stinky and delicious?
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: No, No, they don't, or at least they haven't until
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: this point.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: But I always love getting the chance to ask you
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: about smell and taste stuff. And let's start with sort
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: of a very basic question, how well do we understand
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: smell and taste? Like, do we understand it microscopically?
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: We do, I would say we're still a bit behind
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: vision and hearing as far as our understanding of a
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: lot of the basic biology of it. But it's come
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: a long way, especially in the last thirty years. We
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: know what sells in the nose, which sells in the tongue,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: detect odors and taste. We have a good sense of
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: everything from the protein receptors on their surfaces to the
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: way they connect to the brain and start to organize signals,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: so that we can actually make sense of our detection
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: of all those chemicals that are in our food or
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: in our environment. But it's still a lot left to
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: be worked out, particularly in the way that one distinguishes
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: different types of odors or tastes, or conversely puts them together,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: because of course, you don't really encounter single odor molecules,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: which we call odorant or single taste molecules, except yeah,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: vicetherian cotton candy, you're getting pretty much pure sugar, But
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: usually you're encountering them as mixtures. A flower has hundreds
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: of different compounds that you're smelling at the time foods
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: have tastes and odors that your brain is trying to
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: put those signals together. So how we pull apart the
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: different components and then put them back together so our
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: brain can make sense of them and we can then
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: react in an appropriate way. There's still a lot of
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: questions in those areas.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: And so for vision, we have something of a cartoon understanding,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: at least I do of how this works. You know,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: photons hit these proteins in your eye, they get absorbed,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: they flip some switch, they send a signal of your
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: optic nerve. Your brain gives you an experience of a color.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Do we have an analogous picture for smell and taste?
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Can you walk us through microscopically what happens from when
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: that cotton candy molecule hits your nose or your tongue.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Of course, it depends a little bit on whether you're
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: talking about vertebrates or in vertebrates. There are amazing amounts
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: of similarities in the organization, but a lot of the
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: molecular players are quite different.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Do invertebrates like cotton candy.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Most insects and others like sugars are attracted to at
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: least certain types of sugars, and they will avoid compounds
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: that we perceive of is bitter. But how they do
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: that can be a little bit varied. If we think
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: of smell, what we're working with are millions of cells
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: in our case and sort of the roof of the
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: nasal cavity. These are neurons nerve cells that have one
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: end projecting out into the environment, basically within a mucous
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: layer within your nasal cavity. So when you sniff something
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: or when odors come back from your throat while you're
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: eating and get up into that nasal cavity, they bind
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: with receptor molecules that fit into the family known as
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: G protein coupled receptors. So these are ones that recognize
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: the odor molecule and then initiate a biochemical cascade within
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: the cell that changes the electrical activity of that sell.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Those nerve cells then send messages back through the skull
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: to the brain where they interact with nerve cells of
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: the brain and create this process.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: So folks like me who are not adept to chemistry,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I want to understand what you mean when you say
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: recognize those molecules, Like I'm imagining some molecules sticking up
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: above the mucus and another molecule comes along, and if
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: they have the right sort of shape and electrons in
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the right places, they can bind together. Is that what's happening,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Like they're interacting chemically.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly, So we'd call it docking or binding, where the
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: odor molecule actually fits within a pocket that is formed
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: by the protein strands of the receptor and causes a
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: conformational change. The receptor protein changes its shape, which allows
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: it basically to flip a switch inside the cell, so
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: it's working across the membrane to initiate this cascade. And
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: then one interesting thing about how we perceive ots, there's
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: not a particular receptor just for this molecule and just
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: for that molecule. In humans, we have about four hundred
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: of these receptors. In rodents could be one thousand, fifteen hundred,
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: depending on the species. But even with those numbers, you
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: can imagine that would be a pretty limited repertoire of
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: chemicals you could detect if it was really that one
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: to one thing. What it turns out to be is
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: that each receptor generally can recognize a number of different molecules.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Oftentimes they may even be chemically distinct in their structure,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: and each individual odorant molecule can bind two multiple receptors,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: and so what you're getting is really a pattern of activation.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: The molecule A may turn on receptors one, five, and six,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: molecule B may turn on receptors three, five, and six,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: and that, because of the way those receptors and cells
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: that express them are connected to the brain, gives you
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: different patterns of activation that you then learn to associate
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: with molecule A or molecule B.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: So let me see if I'm understanding The picture I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: was imagining before was something sort of like a lock
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: and key mechanism, where you know, the dog poop molecule
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: floats up and connects with something in my nose and
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: is able to connect in and activate that and as
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: you say, actually change the shape of that which triggers
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: some signal down the brain. But now you're telling me that, like,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: there are lots of different keys that can turn that lock,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: and that one key also can turn multiple locks, so
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: that everything in our environment can turn on several signals,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: and that each signal can actually be turned on by
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: several different kinds of things. So dog poop and cat
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: poop might turn on the same signal, but they also
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: might turn on a different combination of signals.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, you got it.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So you know when I look around my room,
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: there's lots of different wavelengths, lots of different colors hitting
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: my eye. Is smell more complicated vision? And does the
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: brain process it in different ways?
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know if i'd say it's more complicated, but
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: it is a little different, particularly because there's a bit
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: of a learning aspect. You're not born knowing what the
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: utterance of pizza is. You smell the pizza and your
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: brain certain number of receptors are activated by those odor
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: molecules that come from the pizza your sniffing, and you
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: learn that that pattern of activity means pizza, while another
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: one that may have some but not all of the
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: molecules in common means rotting fish. And you know what
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: to do with the mind because there can be.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Overlaps, especially if you're a baby in Iceland and they
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: like rotting fish pizza.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: Right, My PhD involves a lot of rotting fish.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just in Iceland. This summer for our conference, which
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: is fout, I did not eat in any of the
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: rotting fish there though.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Beautiful country, the beautiful country, wonderful people.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, oh it's stunning, stunning.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: So, Steve, you know that there's a common philosophy question
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: which is also a staple in dorm rooms at three am,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: which is like, when I see red, do you see
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the same red? How do we know? And what you
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: just said suggests a similar question about pizza, like when
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I'm smelling pizza, is somebody else experiencing the same thing?
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: And my understanding is that the qualitya of seeing red,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: or the quality of experiencing that signal from your nose
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: is something we don't have a great philosophical handle on.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: We don't know how to compare. We can't experience somebody
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: else's internal subjective experience. Is there an equivalent question for smell?
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: You know? Is there this sort of marry in the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: red room philosophical study about smell and taste?
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: I think from a practical point of view, you can say, indeed,
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: people have different perceptions of the same odor mixture, and
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: one of the classic ones is slantro. Some of you
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: might really like slantro and like sort of that green grassiness,
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: of a brightness of it that it can add to foods,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: and others may hit it and say nope, that's soapy.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: That ends up being less likely a genetic difference in
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: one particular odent receptor that seems to be changed in
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: its responsiveness to those soapy odor components. Those people who
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: get the grassiness as the primary b versus get the
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: soapiness is the primary odor component, are differing in the
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: ability of their odor receptors in their nose to respond
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: to that array of chemicals. So the chemicals are the same,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: but the way someone's perceiving it, and of course the
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: way that impacts their interest in ingesting that changes quite
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: a bit. They're also what we hit a variety of
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: other genetic variants we call specific anosmias, and these are
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: ones where you may have a mutated odent receptor that
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: is the primary receptor for particular compound and you just
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: can't smell it and someone else can't. So endosternone, which
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: is a pig pheromone from male pigs, but there are
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: related chemicals in it they're using cleaning products and other things,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: is a classic of that. There are a lot of people,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: myself included. You can put a big vat in front
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: of my nose. I have no ideas there, and there
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: are other people like my wife who get even remotely
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: close to it, and you know, oh my god, that's awful.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: And there are those types of genetic differences. We did
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: a thing with a bunch of winemakers recently and spiked
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: identical wines, one unspiked one with another compound called rotundo in,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: which is a black peppery odorant, and there were maybe
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: twenty percent of the people in that room that could
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: not actually tell the differences between the wine, even though
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: in that case I could, and it was quite pronounced pepperiness.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: From that respect, there are differences now that is a
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: little different than what you brought up with the are
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: we seeing the same red wavelength getting the same perception
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: of what red is? Although if I recall, there is
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: a fairly common mutation in the green cone option that
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: actually shifts the wavelength response a little bit in that
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: and so in that case you can imagine two people
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: seeing slightly different shades of green. But still I go,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: that's the grass on.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: And so as somebody who is director of a center
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: on smell disorders, would you categorize somebody who can't appreciate
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: cilantro as having a variant or like an issue, like
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a disorder. I mean, this is something we need to treat.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: All these folks out there are like missing out on
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: one of the joys of life.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Colleague of mind Doron lance At once made the statement,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: no one is norma osmic. We all different. That there
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: are four hundred potentially active odent receptor genes in the
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: human and all of us probably have one or two
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: or maybe more that are mutatd in such a way
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: that that changes the way that we respond to the
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: molecules that those receptors would normally spawn to. So we're
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: all seeing something a little different. And I do think
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: that that is distinct from people who have a smell
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: or taste loss, or distortions or phantoms that disrupt their
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: ability to really more globally interact with food, interact with
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: each other, perceive the world around them, or have sort
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: of underlying long term off tastes or equal smells or
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: other things that their brain is constructing. Those are the
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: ones where I put them into the category of disorders,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: as opposed to we have blondes and brunettes and blue
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: eyes and brown eyes and that's more of what I've
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: put a specific in osmia.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: So you mentioned wine. I enjoy wine, but when I
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: read the descriptions on the back, I call both. When
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: I read the back, I'm like, what percent of people
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: who drink wine can taste all of the notes that
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: are listed on the back? Am I in my or
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: the majority of not being able to appreciate a complex
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: flavor profile.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you are in the minority majority.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I can't say that. I am certainly is hugely skilled
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: as people that do that professionally, But part of it
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: is also training. I mean, certainly a summer or winemaker
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: or brewmaster or whatever generally going to have a pretty
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: functional sense of smell and taste in order to be
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: able to get most of the signals that they want
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: to be able to perceive. But the ability to sort
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: of pull out strawberry and lead pencil and black current
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: and whatever others. Part of that is because there's been
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: a standardization of the naming of certain odor perceptions. In
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: the context of wine, beer has its own beer wheel,
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: coffee has its own coffee wheel, so that when someone
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: says lead pencil, they are describing pretty close to the
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: same odorant molecules present there that someone else is. They're
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: trying to make it a common language using more descriptive
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: things rather than saying Islam molassatype or whatever other chemical
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: name you might want to come up with. The other
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: thing that people are really skilled is they practice a lot.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: This is a attention to detail, This is memory, This
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: is like learning the language. All those aspects go into
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: it too, that allow you to sort of focus on.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: So if you get someone who trains you that, Okay,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: these six ones all have this flavor of characteristic and
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: those six ones do not, it becomes a lot easier
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: to start to pick them out, and then once you've
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: done that, it's easier to recognize it as well. So
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: I think it's more practice.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: Than anything I need to switch jobs.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I think that probably also tells us something about the
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: experience of these smells. You know, you're training somebody to
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: recognize as certain responses. You're helping distinguish between black paper
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: and current and whatever. There must be a lot sort
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: of in the neurobiology of smell behind you know, the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: actual chemistry of the receptors as well.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is an interesting contrast with taste in some ways.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: And that taste is much more innate. You give babies sugar,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: they're going to smack their lips, and if they're old enough,
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: they're going to smile and they're going to want to
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: eat more. You give them something that's plain bitter compound,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: they're going to scrunch up their face and put their
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: tongue out and try to sort of spit it out.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: And they're born with that. I mean, we learn over
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: time to give context to that. We learn that in
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: some cases bitterness is not definitely poison. If it's our
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: French rose coffee or our ipa beer or Belgian and
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: dive or whatever it might be. We learn that we
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: can appreciate that as part of a complex flavor profile
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: in a safe way, but innately bitter being spitted out
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: and sweet meaning go ahead and adjust it. There's an
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: energy source.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: There, all right. So here we have a question from
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: a listener that actually inspired this whole episode. So let's
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: go ahead and listen.
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: Hi, Daniel and Kelly. I had a question growing up
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: and going into the woods. I was always told that
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: if you put a plant in your mouth and it's bitter,
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: spit it out, because it's likely poisonous as an adult.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: This raises questions in my mind, why are poisonous plants bitter?
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: Did humans evolve the taste of bitterness exclusively to the
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: tech poisonous plants? But then you got the question of
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: coffee is bitter and we all know how that goes
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: in the morning, But how bitter is too bitter to
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: be poisonous because we know everything in moderation. And then
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: there's the did the boy scout leader just tell me
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: this because he didn't want to see what all of
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: us were trying to put in our mouth because we
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: were super kids. But I have this question. I was
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: hoping you could help me out and figure out why
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: are we able to detect poison as bitterer?
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much. We think that the sense of
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: bitterness has evolved in order to avoid toxins. That seems
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: to be common that compounds that we would perceive of
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: as bitder are also aversive to a lot of other animals,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: even if they're not using the same protein molecules to
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: detect them that mammals are. So that's very common. But
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: obviously we can learn in context that bitterness may also
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: be something that can be attractive if it's put together
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: with other things that we like. Coffee is a good example.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: There are a lot of compounds in coffee, including caffeine,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: that on their own are bitter and you would not
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: like them. No one would like them. Put in the
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: kind of coffee, not only do you have the appealing
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: aroma of coffee, the pharmacologic buzz of the caffeine. The
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: fact that you enjoy going to the coffee shop with
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: your friends is a part of a ritual every morning.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: The fact that you don't see a bunch of dead
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: people laying around that coffee shops they've just been poisoned.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: All these things give you context that tells you that
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: in that particular situation, the bitterness is positive and a
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: lot of people learn to like better. I like darker
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: roasted coffees and I like highly hopped beers. That it's
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: appealing to me. But if I took those compounds in
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: and of themselves, out of that context, I wouldn't. So
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: that's definitely the case. It's interesting that both for the
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: receptors that respond to sweet and umami or savory tastes
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: amino acid tastes as well as to bitter tasting compounds
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: They're not restricted to the taste cells of the mouth,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: the ones that actually lead to taste receptions. They're found
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: all over the body. Bitter receptors are in the gut,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: they're in the heart, they are in the thyroid gland.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of question if are these proteins
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: potentially responding to ingested toxins and then allowing for some
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: sort of physiological protective response if you start to build
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: up too much, or could they be just repurposed in
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: a way that allows the same protein to respond to
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: indigenous signaling molecules within the body and also be used
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: when it's connected up to the taste system, to be
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: used for detecting bitter tastes.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: All right, follow up questions there. First of all, am
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I correct in interpreting your answer is saying that bitter
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: tastes are learned taste and therefore more sophisticated, and therefore
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: we have scientific evidence that dark chocolate is better than
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: white chocolate for example.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: That may be a stretch.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I'm taking that as a yes, and we're moving on.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: My real question is a comment on the idea of
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: having smell receptors in the gut and in the heart.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: And other places in your body as it relates to
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the experience of smell. Is there a possibility that we
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: are experiencing those flavors in our gut or in other
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: parts of our body and it's contributing to our experience.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Are we tasting inside our body?
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: That's a very common question. The answer is quite conclusively no.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Oh man.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: So I'll give you example. So the sweet taste receptor,
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: this is a protein. It's actually a protein complex called
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: T one R two T one R three two members
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: the type one taste receptor family. These in the mouth.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: They are responding not only to sugars, but to anything
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: that you perceive of as sweet. It actually activates this
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: protein complex. It has lots of different binding sides differently,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: so synthetic sweeteners like aspertain so the blue packet saccharin,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: the pink packet, sucrolos, the yellow one proteins that are
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: found in a number of tropical berries and fruits that
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: are highly potent, thousands of times more potent than sugar. Lead.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: One reason the kids eat lead paint is lead acetate
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: taste sweet, and that activates that same receptor. So all
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: of those compounds are giving you a perception of sweetness
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: because they turn on that receptor. That same receptor is
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: in your gut and specifically in a population of cells
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: called ntraantigrin l cells that are involved in glucose responses,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: allowing your metabolic systems to respond to the ingestion of
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: the sugar load. So let's go back to cotton candy.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: You eat that cotton candy, the sugar goes through your
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: digestive system down into your small intestine. Those glucose molecules
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: now interact with the sweet taste receptor, the sitting inside
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: surface of your intestine. That triggers a response that elicits,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: amongst other things, a peptide hormone called glp one glucagun
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: like peptide one, which probably everybody now knows about because
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: of ozembic and govi, which is basically mimics of that peptide,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: and that pep pi can then act on the brain,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: It can act on the pancreas to adjust the insulin
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: release and satiety and things like that. So the receptor
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: is mediating that physiological response in the gut, it's mediating
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: the detection of taste in the mouth. But why is
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: it not giving you taste in the gut. It's because
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: the nerves that connect that part of the gut to
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: the brain go to a different area than the nerves
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: that connect the part of the tongue. So how you
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: are detecting it is the same. It's the same lock
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: in those two different places, but the doors that they
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: are in are very different.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: So Daniel and I will asking you questions have been
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: alternating between saying smell and taste, and we haven't been consistent,
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: But those are different. How does our body respond to
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: smell and taste differently? Or is it okay that we're
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: being sort of loose with those terms.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: No, I think it's something we do want to distinguish,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: and maybe it's good to briefly define them explicitly. So
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: smell is going to be at least in humans. The
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: detection of volatile chemicals, whether coming through the nares of
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: your nose the front, or as you sniff, that would
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: be called that orthonasal faction, or as you're chewing food
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: or drinking drink. Otor molecules that volatize can come up
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: back through your throat and enter your nasal cavity. That way,
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: we call that retro nasal olfaction.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: From the back, and volatile just means it goes into.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: The air, and volatile just means it is light enough
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: to go in the air. Okay, the receptors are all
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: in the nose. In lower primitive mammals, you're going to
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: have also another variant called the vomer and nasal organ.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: This is part of the accessoril factory system that can
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: not only respond to some volatile chemicals, but also peptides
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: can serve as olfactory stimuli.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: There So the vomero nasal organ. When snakes are sensing
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: their environment, they stick it into the romero nasal organ
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: to like figure out cent trails. Is that right? Can
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: we go a little more into detail about what that does?
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, so snake's doing it a little differently. It tends
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: to require contact in mice. In rants, the mouse will
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: generally stick its nose right in whatever that odor source is,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: whether it's the glandeurth, secretions of a mate or a
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: fool of urine or what might be. These are often
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: social signals that can be sex or aggression, pheromones or
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: predator cues or such. There's within the vomer a nasal organ,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: which is just adjacent to the nasal cavity. There's a
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: blood vessel that will pump those molecules into the organ
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: where they can interact with these specialized olfactory neurons in
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: that goes back to a slightly different part of the brain.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Humans don't have that organ, so it's a little bit different.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: So you have all those and those are all located
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: in the nose and they project to specific areas of
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: the brain. Taste is very specifically the detection of non
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: volatile compounds like sugars and salts, and acids and amino
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: acids and a variety of compounds that can be perceived
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: of the spinner. They activate cells that sit within taste
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: buds for the most part, which are basically just little
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: onion like collections of cells, and those are on the tongue,
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: certain taste papillo, some of the bumps in your tongue,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: and they're also in the soft palate in my favorite
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: German word, the geschmack Strifen, which is the taste strip,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: which a bunch of taste buds in the soft pealet
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: and then there also are some in the varyingx throat.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Those are connected to different parts of the brain. Specifically
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: to the brain stem, and that's carrying taste information. There's
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: a third chemical sense both smell and taste or detecting chemicals.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: The third chemical sense is known as chemisthesis, and chemos
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: thesis is one you probably haven't heard the name of,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: but you've experienced, and that is when chemicals that are
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: often in spices or herbs will sort of hijacked sensors
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: for temperature or pain or vibration. So capsayasin and a
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: hot chili pepper, menthol in, mint, santial in, sesshue, peppercorns,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: these are going to basically be naturally current chemicals that
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: make this is generally trigeminal nerve sensors feel like they've
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: been activated. So capsaicin makes it feel like there's warmth
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: there even though there's no change in temperature because it's
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: turning on a heat receptor. Menthol is cooling because it's
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: turning on a cold sensitive receptor.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Did you say there was one that triggers a sense
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: of vibration.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the sansial in such one peppercorns, which are actually
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: flower bites, give see this little tingling aspect to it.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: I see, So it's different from capsas and it's not
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: a warm.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: It seems to have a bit of a warmth aspect
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: to it as well. So some of these can be
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: working across but their compounds in ginger and compounds and
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: eucalyptus and all these types of that will do this
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: type of thing.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: And is the chemical mechanism the same, the sort of
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: lock and key structure the same for all these different
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: kinds of experiences.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: They are, although in these cases they're primarily attaching to
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: ion channels, which are proteins that can be bound by
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: an external chemical But then they open up and they
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: let charge particles fly across the rent, so they're not
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: triggering an intracellular biochemical cascade. They're actually changing the electrical
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: properties of the cells directly. So just different families proteins,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: but they do all come together in this all comes
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: together in the brain, and that's what we call flavor.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: So flavor is smell plus taste. You can bring chemosthesis
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: into that. You can also impact flavor by site. For example,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: if either you remember crystal pepsi or any of these
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: clear colas that came out a number of years ago.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: One of the problems was is you looked at it,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: you expected a seltzer or a sprite or whatever or not,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: and then you drank it and there was a real
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: disconnect between your expectation and what your taste and smell
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: was telling you. So sometimes those visual cues temperature, and
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: other things can impact how your flavors perceive. But one
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: of the big term confusions is how I would say
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: the general population uses the word taste versus how we
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: face as smell scientists use it. When we as scientists
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: use it, we mean just those limited sweet, sour, salty, bitter,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: umami tastes happening in the mouth. Patient comes they've lost
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: their sense of smell. They may say, I can't taste anything.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: It all tastes really flat. If you were to test
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: them with putting sugar on their tongue or salt on
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: their tongue, it probably would work really well. But what
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: they've lost is the complexity of flavor that comes from
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: the odors that arise from those foods. The ability to
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: distinguish a lemon from a lime if you're not looking
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: at the color of it, is not because one is
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: sour and one's not sour the most sour, but one
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: has a different complement of ettererant molecules than the other
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: that gives it a subtly different perceptual flavor.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: You distinguish smell and taste in terms of whether or
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: not the things can volatilize. Is that just because it
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: determines where it lands, like on your tongue or on
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: your nose, or is there fundamentally different sweet receptors there?
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: For example, to make a concrete is there a smell
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: of salt? Like salt doesn't volatilize. You're sitting in front
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: of a crystal of salt. You can't receive any salt
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: molecules on your nose. Obviously, you lick it, you taste it,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: But is there a smell of salt if you could
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: like pulverize the salt and sprayed against your nose, would
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: you notice anything?
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Basically, no, there's not. I mean people often if you
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: ever looked at Terminado sugar, you know that's a raw sugar.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: This hasn't been really refined. It has an aroma to it,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: but that's sort of the leftover molasses and stuff. If
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: you were to get pure sucrose or pure sodium chloride,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: and you do, there are no contaminants. They're really not
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: going to give you a smell. I mean, if you
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: could somehow create a spray of individual sodium chloride molecules,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: I guess there wouldn't be anything specific, because that would
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: be a molecule that would probably impact every single receptor. Wow,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: I'd just give you a background blur.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: So if you had to lose your sense of taste
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: or your sense of smell, which would you rather.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Lose smell easily?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Wow?
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: And that's not because any way just diminished. I don't
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: want to lose either of them. Yeah, people who I
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: would say I would probably rather lose sight, er hearing
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: than smell or taste. Once again, I don't want to
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: lose any of them. The reason that I put taste
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: at sort of the top of the list of not
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: wanting to is because the people who really cannot taste,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: it's much less common than people losing the sense of smell.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: I've actually met someone who actually born without a sense
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: of taste, and one thing that they sort of routinely
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: describe is just how hard it is to eat. I mean,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: even to swallow food. Everything becomes very texturally driven in
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: the mouth, so soft foods are really hard to get
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: down and it just seems like a real challenge for
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: them for whole life.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Wait, so soft foods are unpleasant without taste, is that
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: what you're saying.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something about without having that taste, but it's
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: just purely the texture impact. The yogurts and cotta cheese.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, not that I want to eat cottage cheese anyway,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: but oh, these things aren't just very difficult. So usually
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: what they will do is they'll try to add texture
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: to it, which is to make any time with a
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: sensory loss, if you can make things multisensory in other
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: ways that help to offset some of those losses. We
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: say that for people with smell disorders, explore adding different spices,
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: adding textures, adding color to your food to make it
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: more palatable, enjoyable. You're never going to hundred percent offset
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: the loss of the ability to smell the aromas, but
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: you can get it closer. A lot of South Asian
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: food oftentimes are very popular with individuals who have lost
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: their sense of smell because of the spices.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: So you're saying, crunchy blue cottage cheese is a better
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: experience than white, soft cottage cheese.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's a low Baruch.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: Let's take a break and we'll come back and talk
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: more about smell and taste.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: So this helps me understand a question I wanted to ask,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: which was about what happens when we get a cold
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: and our nose is plugged up and things taste like cardboard.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: So I'm guessing now from your answers before that my
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: taste hasn't changed because I can still put my tongue
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: on things, but my sense of smell has decreased, and
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: so my flavor experience has changed. So I can still
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: technically taste things when I have a cold, but I'm
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: not getting the full experience exactly.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: You're losing You're having diminished flavor perception while your taste
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: is the same. But that's being technically how we use
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: it as opposed to the way most people would colloquially
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: describe it. So that's having diminished taste. But yes, taste
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: and smell are differentially affected. There are a variety of
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: reasons that people could lose sense of smell, sometimes very temporarily,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: like just having a head cold where you're just clogged
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: up and so the outer molecules can't get to where
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: they need to go. Sometimes it's because of shorter or
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: longer term damage, everything from viruses to inhale toxins or pollutants,
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: sino nasal disease. It may cause inflammation, allergies, head trauma,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: early stages Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other neurological generative diseases.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Exposure to the swamps of Virginia Daniel.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: If I could just intruct it, are those things like
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: messing up the shape of the receptors, are messing up
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: the connection between the neurons that talk to your brain,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: or maybe it's a combination of these things.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: They differ. So for example, loss of smell is one
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: of the earliest signs of what we call idiopathic or
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: typical Parkinson's disease, even before some of the motor symptoms.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: While we don't know exactly how it's happening, what seems
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: to be the case is areas of the brain that
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: are affected by Parkinson's. Some of the earlier areas to
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: be affected are ones that are important for dealing with smell,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: So that's happening in the brain, not in the periphery
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: within the nose. Contrast that with COVID nineteen, so we'd
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: known for long time that a variety of viruses, common
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: coronaviruses that can cause common cold, rhinoviruses, abnoviruses, influenza, they
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: could in some people will lead to temporary or permanent
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: smell loss. In COVID was really striking how many people
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: were losing their sense of smell very rapidly, and the
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: large number of them, probably about ten percent, may never
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: recover that spell that they lost, which is really hard
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: for them to deal with. But we do know something
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: about how that virus is causing this disruption. And so
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: in the tissue in your nose where those sensory neurons
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: are sitting that detect the odors, that's called the olfactory epithelium,
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: there are other cells there that support those neurons actions.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: There are supporting cells called sustentacular cells that are sort
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: of balancing the environment. They may be putting out certain
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: molecules in the area. They're providing support to the whole tissue.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: There are glandular cells, there are stem cells that are
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: allowing the tissue throughout your life to constantly regenerate. It
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: turns out that the virus doesn't directly attack the sensory
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: neurons tacks the supporting cells and the stem cells, and
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: in some people that attack, that disruption of those cells
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: is going to be temporary enough the cells, some of them, survive.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: The neurons aren't damaged indirectly enough to not be able
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: to recover. Maybe the neurons are wiped out, but the
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: stem cells are intact and they're able to regenerate the
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: tissue in a few days or weeks. But in other
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: people the damage is extensive enough that that does not
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: seem to be the case. But it is a sort
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: of an indirect attack by the virus on the olfactory neurons,
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: rather than the neurons.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Themselves be dead.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Other viruses may work differently, but it is that peripheral
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: damage that's the issue. Now we also know that in
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: a small number of people there seem to be true
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: taste effects and even chemosthesis effects. You may have send
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: videos of people saying, oh, yeah, I'm chewing an onion,
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: or I'm going to just shovel garlic into my mouth,
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: not perceiving.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: It at all. We don't know why or how.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: The virus was affecting taste or chemosthesis. Those losses did
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: seem to be temporary. I'm not aware of long term
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: losses in those senses.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: So I have a friend she lost her sense of smell,
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: and then when it came back, she was smelling things
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: that weren't there. Is that common and what causes that?
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: That actually is very common. So if we think of
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: smell disorders, we can break them into two different categories.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: One we'd call quantitative disorders, So this really a reduction
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: or complete inability to detect or perceive odors, and the
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: others are qualitative someone changing the quality of the smell.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: And we can break those into two different groups. Parosmia
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: is distorted smell. So someone put a flower in front
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: of your nose, you smell, and it smells like garbage,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: and that's you can imagine not good. Phantosmia is the
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: perception of smells when nothing is there. I smell smoke,
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: I smell sometimes luckily those are pleasant smells, but more often,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: like with the prosmea, they are unpleasant smells as well. Well.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: You mentioned fecal phantoms earlier that I have to follow
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: up on.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, equal smells, garbage smells are ones that are very common.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: These often not exclusively, but often will come sort of
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: as the system is trying to potentially repair itself. We
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: see someone's getting they've lost their sense of smell, so
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: they have an osmia with no ability smell, or hyposmia
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: reduce smell, and that sense of smell is coming back.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: But during that time, parosmia or phantosmia emerges. And while
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: we don't absolutely know the cause, it may be as
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: the system's trying to rewire itself whenever the brain is
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: getting miss signals or creating signals looking for them when
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: they aren't fully coming from the nose. So that is
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: unfortunately pretty common.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: And why don't we understand the cause? What's hard about
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: these studies is it that we're talking about humans and
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: brains and you can't just do whatever experiments you want.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: I think there are a couple of reasons. One is
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: that the senses of smell and taste were very much
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: neglected from a medical point of view for many, many years.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: The loser sense of smell, you go to the doctor
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: if they even knew anything about it, because they don't
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: get taught about it in medical school to any meaningful extent.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: They might say, oh, that's too bad, You're just gonna
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: have to live with it. Or nothing we can do
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: about it and sort of getting passed off of that
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: there wasn't a lot of attention to it. The other is,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: for those qualitative disorders parosmi and phantasmia, we can't measure
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: them in any objective way. We have tools to measure
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: smell loss, the variety of psychophysical tests that we can
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: do that can allow us to quantify how sensitive you
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: are to particular odors. With parosmia and photosmia, we are
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: entirely relying on the patient being able to describe it
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: and sort of related. We just don't have the tools
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: to investigate it nearly as well as for smell loss.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: You mentioned that the phantom smells tend to to be
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: like garbage or feces. Is there any hypothesis for why
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: bad smells are what comes first? Does it represent anything about, like,
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: you know, evolutionarily, smells that clue us into the presence
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: of like disease causing agents are more important, so we
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: put those online first, or who the heck knows?
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: I think it's both of those that you gave. What
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: I'd say, it's probably the leading hypothesis about it that
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: avoiding bad is more important, So it sort of faulse
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: to that, but there's really no evidence to support it,
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: just as the one that seems to make more sense.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: But yeah, we just don't know.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: And what about on the other end of the spectrum.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: I remember hearing when I visited a perfume factory once
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: in France that there are people who are like super smellers,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: and you know, their job is to like distinguish these
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: smells and design new perfumes. And there's like a very
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: small number of these supernoses. And also that their noses
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: get tired, so they can only work for a few
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: hours during the day and then that's spend the rest
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: of the day on the beach recovering from all this,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: you know, difficult smelling work. Are these people real? Oh's
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: the whole thing a scam? And how does your nose
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: get tired?
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: They are real? Yeah, Generally their professional term is a
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: nose professional nose. And much like we were talking about
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: earlier about Sammie's and others, they've been trained. They certainly
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: have a good sense of smell. They probably are if
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: we look on the bell curve, they lean towards the
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: better end of those abilities. But they've also really learned
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: to recognize all these things. But the reason that they
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: get tired is what we call it adaptation or desensitization
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: and habituation, depending on where along in the nose and
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: brain this happens. But basically, when you're having something stimulated
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: over and over, you can sort of oversaturate a particular
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: information channel in the brain and it will dial down
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: the gain and come less. So you have to take breaks.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Even when we're smell testing people, we work in breaks
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: within it so that they don't get sort of overwhelmed
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: and saturated, so they're attuned to the next Like you
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: all experience adaptation. You go into a bakery and smell
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: the cookies and the breads and everything, and then you're
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: there for a few minutes and it just there goes away.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: You don't really notice it anymore. Part of that is
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: the gain of the system being down. Part of that
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: is your brain attending to novel stimuli and all of that.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know if they head out to the beach,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: probably most of them are in Paris or Geneva, but yeah,
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: there's a real physiological reason that they need to have
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: those breaks.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I used to know a guy who lived downwind
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: from the Nilla wafer factory in Houston, and he said
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: he had to move away because he was gaining weight
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: because it just made him eat all the time. And
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: it makes me wonder about the sort of subconscious effect
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: of smells. I mean, are there smells that affect our
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: behavior that we don't consciously experience? Are there, for example,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: human pheromones that you know attract you to somebody or not.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Do perfumes actually do that to people?
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: There's no good evidence of human fairmonts. And by a
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: pheromone specifically mean a odoor that's given off by one
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: number of a species, that acts on another member of
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: a species to change its behavior, or some physiological response
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: like a hormonal response. We don't use those, but certainly
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: smells can affect our interactions with each other. You talk
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: about two young mothers who lose their sense of smell.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: One of the things they'll bring up very early. So
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: you know my baby's head, I love smelling his hair
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: after you got to wash your stuff. There definitely is
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: a link between smell and emotion and sort of that
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: bonding and all those types of things. Romantic partners will
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: often talk about enjoying the smell of their partner and
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: things like that, But these are not innate triggering fair
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: aomones in that way. But similarly, it can be if
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: your friend had the nil away for experience and that
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: triggered you know, intensity, maybe around front baking all the time,
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: whatever it is. But people who live near hog farms
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: that have these large pools to deal with the waste.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: There are a lot of studies about the increased depression.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: Ecal lagoons cause people to get depressed or saying.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly wow, so yeah, those aspects are very real.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: When I was in college, I remember in my evolutionary
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: psychology class learning about these studies where like men wear
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: shirts and then the women smelled the shirts and then
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: rated which men were the most attractive. So that's not pheromones.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: Has that study since been debunked or was there something
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: else that they were picking up on?
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: There certainly are questions about the extent of that mean.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Certainly the concept of women's menstrual cycles coordinating in dorms
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: and things like that that may be spell related. I
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: would say they haven't always been replicated to the sense.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: So I thought that one was fairly debunked. That it's
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: more like a statistical you're just going to overlap twenty
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: five percent of the time.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: By chance or something.
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It's also not something I think a lot
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: of people are spending a lot of time studying at
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: the moment.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: And if we have some understanding of the chemical mechanism
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: of this, can we make progress towards things like recording
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: sense digitally and then manufacturing them. You know, can I
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: create an artificial nose with all of these receptors, write
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: down the signals and then create something which puffs out
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: those molecules on the other side, or I could like
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: email somebody a smell.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: There are a lot of efforts in this area, and
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: you can imagine artificial noses being used as sensors for
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: all sorts of things, biosecurity types of questions. They put
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: them in fields to know when the props are ready
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: to harvest, or if there's been an infestation, things like that.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: A lot of these it could be more specialized. You'd
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: certainly love to have. You know, there's a lot of
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: evidence that the aromas that an individual gives off if
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: they have cancer or if they have some other disease
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: might be unique. If you could identify those chemicals there
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: are dogs that have been trained, although that's really hard
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: to make a regular part of it because just the
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: amount of training and how you have to go through that.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: But if you can have a sensor a wand you
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: could wave over someone to detect that, that would be
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: a miracle. But there's also commercial ways for trying to
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: replicate this with food or with other types of aromas
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: you might like to recapitulate. For example, a lot of
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: the flavor houses now will usually go around and sample things.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: They put a dome to capture the odor headspace over
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: a plate of food at a particular food truck that
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: you like, or you put over a borneo forest and
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: collect all the volatives coming off a particular group of
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: plants or whatever. Take those back, use modern biochemical chromatographic
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: mass spect types of techniques to define not only every
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: single molecule but also its relative concentration, which is very important,
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: and then they can recapitulate these. They can do this chemically,
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: but then can you also send it a lot long
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: to have a production apparatus on the other end of
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: that email that that can then puff it out. People
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: have been trying that to various degrees for decades now,
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: and I think the technology is catching up to be
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: able to do that in a much more sophisticated way.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: So I could email California to Kelly so she can
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: also enjoy the sense of the ocean and the floral notes.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm going to try to be nice and
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: not mentioned that right now, you'd probably be sending me
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: the smell of burning home. But Virginia's got some perks. Man.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this seems like maybe a running.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: This is a running debate.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: So my question is, I hope a question you haven't
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: heard before, which is about smell and taste on other planets.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: Given the usefulness of smell and taste and our knowledge
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: of the evolutionary history on Earth, what do you think
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: the chances are that aliens, when they evolve on their
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: planets smell and taste or don't smell and taste. How
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: likely do you think this is to be ubiquitous to
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: life in the universe.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: I would think it would be more ubiquitous than other senses.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: They are chemicals everywhere the universes, chemicals just arranged in
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: different forms, and so being able to sense that is
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: really integral. You look at unicellular organisms, whether they're bacteria,
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: protozoans or whatnot. They can all sense the chemicals around them.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: These are fundamentally primitive forms of smell and taste. So yeah,
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: I think that is clearly going to be a thing.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: Whether it is put together the same way then we have.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: It's interesting that while the receptors in a fruit fly
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: and a human, the receptors for odors and for tastes
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: are molecularly completely distinct from each other those two families.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: It's not a single evolutionary origin of the odor receptors
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: across those different phila, but the arrangement of what the
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: sensory neurons look like, how they're arranged connected to the brain,
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: and how they arranged is actually remarkably similar. And those
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: that independently evolve, so there seem to be some strategies
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: that have benefited from that conservation or at least limited
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: repertoire of options, while other ones are free to to
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: sort of evolve independently and come up with more than
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: one solution to the problem.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: Do aliens like cilantro a question we don't yet have
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: an answer to.
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: Maybe one day, all right. As someone with anxiety, I'm
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: still dwelling on the fact that I called your research
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: weird at the beginning. What I meant was, I asked
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: you weird questions because of what you do.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: I don't remember that.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: Oh good, good. So then the lead in is you
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: just started this new center for smell and taste disorders.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: Tell us a bit about your new center that you're
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: co directing.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks for that opportunity. It's something that we've seen
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: over the last decades that there's a huge need for.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: And what that need is we have massive underserved population
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: of people that are experiencing the disorders, but the amount
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: of research that's going into trying to better diagnose them,
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: better support them, and eventually better treat them is really small.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: One of the small bright spots of COVID was because
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: of the prevalence of smell loss and taste loss that
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: associated with COVID. It brought a greater attention and understanding
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: of the broader population about how impactful these disorders can be.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: But we still have a long way goo and we
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: don't want to lose the momentum of that knowledge and
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: appreciation from it. So the center is really trying to
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: areas within its mission, and one is patient care, So
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: being able to make sure that someone who has a
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: smell or taste disorder has a place to go to
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: get diagnosed, perhaps identifying underlying cause that might be treatable,
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: as well to get support such that they better understand
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: how to improve the palatability of the food, how to
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: be safer with gas leaks and fires and spoiled food
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: and things that they may be hard to detect, how
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: to get emotional or therapeutic support if they're being depressed,
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: which is very common, where's changing their social relationships. We
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: also want to facilitate research, and that's everything from the
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: very fundamental building blocks of smell and taste and how
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: it works, so that we can better understand how it
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: may not work when it's spent, but also clinical studies
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: looking at dignostics and treatment. One of the studies we're
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: doing right now is trying to answer a very simple
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: question is how much does your sense of smell normally
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: vary morning versus night day to day, if you're pregnant
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: during menstrual cycle, if you have other types of disorders,
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: so that you can have a base line to understanding.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: So if you're going to get your sense of smell
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: regularly tested, do you actually know what's just normal variation
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: versus an actual pathologic change that needs to be dealt with.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: So we want to train doctors and scientists in this
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: field to a better degree than is often the case.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: And then we want to reach out to the community
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: education and engagement to kill people every whether it's with
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: a disorder or whether it's for people who chefs, mind makers,
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: and who or not that are using smell and taste
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: as part of their livelihood and how they make their
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: way through the world, to help them better understand that
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: Awesome, Well, congrats on the new center. I learned a
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: lot today. I think I'm going to appreciate the next
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: piece of food that I eat even more and appreciate
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: how complex it is. I love that we learned the
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: thing about vibrating. The next time I go to a
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: Chinese restaurant, I'm definitely going to order something with extra
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: session one. So yeah, thank you so much for coming
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: on the show.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me. It is fun.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: would love to hear from you, We really would.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: We want to know what questions you have about this
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Extraordinary universe.
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