The nose and sense of smell provide early indicators of Covid-19 and neurodegenerative diseases, and could be important in determining the cause of diseases, writes Professor Maurice Curtis, Head of the Department of Anatomy and Medical Imaging and a Principal Investigator in the Brain Research New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence.
Have you ever experienced a momentary smell that instantly took you back to a specific event, as if it were happening again? The smell of sunblock reminding you of summer on a beach; the scent of a flower transporting you back to a Pacific Island getaway.
The human sense of smell is remarkable, allowing us to detect and remember millions of odours and linking that odour with events in our lives.
Humans use their sense of smell to, for example, identify ‘off’ food, turn away from malodorous substances, heighten alertness and subconsciously influence our partner selection; indeed the sense of smell goes part way to explaining attraction. From a daily living perspective a good sense of smell improves our quality of life. In studies of those who have lost their sense of smell, a condition called anosmia, 70 percent of people report reduced quality of life while nearly 60 percent felt it altered their daily living.
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