We have some sensory devices that play an obvious role in helping us suss-out danger: eyes allow us to spot it coming head on, touch allows us to distinguish dangerous temperature or pressure- but what about our nose? It would seem that the nose is involved with so many scents that it would be hard to tell if one was dangerous. I mean, we hire special dogs to do that, right? New research shows how protecting our future can be as simple as breathing in…and getting a shock (they swear it’s just a small one). Researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine linked a single negative experience to an odor, and participants rapidly learned how to identify a “dangerous” odor from similar, innocuous ones.

Participants were given a series of similar grassy smells that were initially indistinguishable. The subjects received an electrical shock when they were exposed to a specific grassy smell. The shock paired with the specific smell was the catalyst for users (or their noses anyway) to distinguish between the smells. Once impossible to separate, the smell with the negative emotional experience tied to it now smelled different from the others.

Dr. Wen Li, the lead author on the study, talked about the evolutionary significance of the nasal education: “This helps us to have a very sensitive ability to detect something that is important to our survival from an ocean of environmental information. It warns us that it’s dangerous and we have to pay attention to it. ”

This may help to explain why I still remember and cringe from my ex-boyfriend’s cologne.

Further Reading:

Northwestern University (2008, March 31). One Bad Experience Linked To Sniffing Out The Danger. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 31, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327172314.htm