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| Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, PA |
History
The Monell Chemical Senses Center was possible through the collaboration of the government, academic, and industry scientists. Its first director, Dr. Morley Kare, was a junior professor in the veterinary school in Cornell and was investigating food choice in a variety of species when he became interested in studying the field of "minor senses", taste and smell. The Ambrose Monell Foundation pledged to create the Monell Chemical Senses Center and government entities, such as the National Science Foundation and Veterans Affairs Administration, and corporate leaders encouraged Dr. Kare to envision a multi-disciplinary scientific institute. In 1967, University of Pennsylvania was chosen as the place for the new research institute, but in 1978, Monell became an independent non-profit research institute separate from Penn due to its rapid growth. Monell has no departmental structure and rather encourages multidisciplinary interaction between its staff. Dr. Kare died in 1990 and was succeeded by Dr. Gary K. Beauchamp, who still is in position.
Mission
“Monell’s mission is to advance scientific understanding of the mechanisms and functions of the chemical senses to benefit human health and well-being. ”
Experiments
Monell Chemical Senses Center's research findings are published in many research, biomedical, and clinical journals, and presented in academic conferences. Also, many online websites (especially websites concerned with health and medicine) reproduce the publications by Monell to share the study results that are very interesting. Here are only a few that were reproduced via online websites out of the 2000 articles produced by Monell scientists. Feel free to click on the titles for more information!
Monell found out that underarm odors are more difficult to mask when women are doing the smelling. This study asked women and men to rate the strength of body odors, both alone and fragrances applied. Various fragrances were selected to test their ability to mask underarm odor. The method used was cross-adaptation, which is when the nose adapts to one smell and then becomes less sensitive to a second smell because constant exposure to a smell makes it less sensitive. So, sweat collected from volunteers were put into vials and panelists rated the strength of the odor. Then, panelists continued rating the intensity of the odor while sniffing a fragrance for 2 1/2 minutes. Both men and women could strongly smell the underarm odors alone (no fragrances). However, when fragrance was introduced, only two of 32 scents successfully blocked underarm odor when women were doing the smelling while a higher number of 19 fragrances blocked underarm odor when men did the smelling. A drop in the intensity ratings of underarm odor indicated that the fragrance was a successful cross-adapting agent that neutralizes odor. Another finding was that male odor was harder to block than female odor. Although both male and female underarm odors had the same strength of smell, only 19 percent of fragrances were able to reduce the strength of male odors in contrast to more than 50 percent of fragrances in female odor. The study indicated that human sweat conveys information that is particularly important to females, such as helping choose mates, which is why it is harder to block women's perception of odor. No wonder there are more pictures of women associated with smell (Google 'smell' and look at the images; most of them are women next to flowers)!
Monell researchers discovered that taking as little as hundred milliseconds longer to smell an odor results in a more accurate identification of the odor. This seems obvious, but the researchers say that such finding has important implications regarding how olfactory information is processed in the brain. Previous publications indicated that olfactory processing was different from vision and audition, but this research clearly verified that they are similar. Now the researchers can use the accumulated information of vision and audition to understand olfaction. Using the approach that was taken to understand information processing in visual and auditory systems, Monell researchers developed a new behavior paradigm using trained mice and results showed that the mice needed extra time to accurately identify more complex odors. Now, the researchers are looking into what the brain is doing in this extra time of identification of complex odors. An interesting comment was included to support their emphasis of the importance of olfaction study:
“The development of color television was based on extensive studies of visual sensory processing. Modern MP3 players are built based on a deep knowledge about properties of our hearing capabilities. Similarly, increased knowledge of olfactory processing has the obvious potential to open many doors, perhaps including development of electronic olfactory systems that would have capabilities such as identification of odors for medical diagnosis or detection of land mines.” - Rinberg, physicist and computational neuroscientist.
No wonder the Army Research Office also funded this research... Detection of land mines.
A joint research discovered that electrically stimulating the visual cortex improves the performance of smelling, in this case it was picking out the odd odor out of a group of three. Different senses are tied to different areas in the brain, but this result shows that brain structures involved in different senses can be interconnected. Not so mind-blowing? I forgot two words at the end: "in everyone". Before this finding, only people with synesthesia were thought to have such cross-wiring of senses. Synesthesia is a condition in which a stimulation in one sense causes automatic and involuntary experiences in a second sense, such as hearing smells or smelling words. Therefore, this study tells us that everyone has cross-wiring of senses in them. But don't try to do this at home!
On page 1 of the newsletter, the small section titled 'Sniffing Out Disease' talks about Monell's findings on smell detections on diseases. Such identification of disease-associated odors can lead to electronic sensors for early detection of certain diseases. Some researchers at Monell have already developed an 'e-nose' that can sense minute amount of biologically-based odor chemicals. The developers expect that future electronic olfactory devices will help physicians in disease diagnosis using "odorant sensing".
The current director of Monell has participated in this research. Findings were that individuals have body odors providing consistent odor prints similar to fingerprints. Such odorprint can be detected by animal's nose or chemical instruments. Humans and mice have unique genetically-determined body odors called 'odortypes', which are transmitted through body fluids like sweat and urine. But, the type of food eaten can influence body odor; garlic can be detected by smell when eaten in large amounts. Therefore, wouldn't dietary changes mask individual odortypes, which is an individual's identity. In behavioral and chemical tests of mice that changed diet, odortypes persisted while odor profiles of mice were strongly influenced. This study suggests that biologically-based odorprints are reliable as fingerprints in identifying individuals. If this result can be shown to be the case for humans too, it opens up the possibility of the invention of devices that can detect individual odorprints in humans.
More
Than
Smell
Monell Chemical Senses Center also engages in experiments revealing the sense of taste and research on the impact of taste in human health. In this particular link I've provided, an artist works with the team at Monell Chemical Senses Center to explore her interests of the sense of smell from an artistic perspective. One of the videos features a Monell scientist who experiments to explore the sense of taste.
There are other videos (Vimeo) at this website that shows an interesting device that converts smell to sounds or music notes:
More Info
If you want to participate in a research:
If you are interested in working at Monell:
If you don't have plans for the summer:
by Rebecca Cho
Works Cited
http://www.margiepatlak.com/Flavor_of_Health.pdf
"Open Your Eyes and
Smell the Roses: Activating the Visual Cortex Improves Our Sense of
Smell." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 28 Feb. 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2012.
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120228185542.htm>.
"Quick -- What's That
Smell?" Bio-medicine.org. Bio-Medicine, 2 Aug. 2006. Web. 30 Apr. 2012.
<http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news/Quick----what-u2019s-that-smell-3F-3451-1/>.
Stein, Leslie.
"Fragrance Science Alliance Monell Chemical Senses Center." The Sense
of Smell
Institute. Web. 30 Apr. 2012.
<http://www.senseofsmell.org/science-alliance-monell-press.php>.
Thompson, Andrea. "Your
Odor: Unique as Fingerprint." LiveScience.com. Live Science,
5 Nov. 2008.
Web. 30 Apr. 2012. <http://www.livescience.com/5188-odor-unique-fingerprint.html>.
Turner, Raewyn. "Artist
Residency at Monell." Kissingbees.wordpress.com. Kissing Bees,
Oct. 2011.
Web. 30 Apr. 2012.
<http://kissingbees.wordpress.com/category/artist-residency-at-monell/>.
I found that your research on the Monell Chemical Senses Center was really well connected to this weeks readings. “Although both male and female underarm odors had the same strength of smell, only 19 percent of fragrances were able to reduce the strength of male odors in contrast to more than 50 percent of fragrances in female odor”. After reading that section I immediately began thinking about the Doty reading that emphasized how men and women experience body odors, from skin secretions, in different ways. Although they did not do any studies of men and women wearing perfume, they discussed similarly how men perspire more due to the fact that they have larger sweat glands. Do you think that due to the fact that men have larger sweat glands, compared to that of women, that this might be why only 19 percent of fragrances were able to reduce the strength of male odors?
ReplyDeleteI also like how you talked about the research being done with the “e-nose” (so this comment also is applied to Jerri's section on the “e-nose”). You stated how the “electronic olfactory devices will help physicians in disease diagnosis using "odorant sensing". Did the website mention anything about how human beings used to use their sense of smell to detect certain diseases? In the Doty reading for this week, it mentions how this was actually used at one point because certain diseases produced certain odors that could be detected by scent (such as Diabetes producing an odor of acetone breath). But like you and Jerri stated, the electronic nose will probably be able to pick up on those minute scents that maybe the human nose is not trained to detect (and also doesn't have the risk of a real nose that could become desensitized to certain odors after too much exposure).
-kelly peters
I found this section interesting in connection to the "Olfactory Communication In Humans" by Richard Doty (this week's reading). After all the experiments presented in the reading and the conclusions made by the author about women being able to identify smells better than men, an idea came to mind that what if women just pay more attention to scents. In this section it is mentioned that blocking smell from women's perception is harder, and women are usually associated with smell. This was interesting because it just added to my thoughts that I was having while reading the Doty article. Another thing that was mentioned in the reading was the "group of disorders in metabolism which lead to unusual odor" (Doty, 1981; 351). Here it is mentioned that there is work being done on creating an electronic olfactory device to help physicians identify a disease by its certain odor. Also interesting was the section on "Your Odor: unique as fingerprints". We know that there are certain tastes that some people cannot identify such as bitterness, but are there also scents that some can't identify or notice? Not a lot of body odors stand out when in contact with others, does that mean we are not able to smell certain odors or do we not have a strong enough sense of smell to identify these one of a kind body odors?
ReplyDeleteShaudee Farboudmanesh
Wonderful introduction that engages in all of the readings that we have done, especially the Doty article that we have read this week. The higher difficulty in terms of masking smell from females further suggests that women are better in terms of picking up body odors. The finding that male odor is harder to block than the female odor was also stated by Doty when he discusses the tendency of the subjects to connect males with odors that are stronger and less pleasant, and females with odors that are weaker and less unpleasant because “women have smaller apocrine glands than men” (355). The E-Nose is very interesting, and I am especially curious at the possibility if one with anosmia can have the actual e-nose installed in them; and also will their sense of smell become "standard", similar to a hearing aid.
ReplyDeleteJason Tang
I was also interested with the findings that the Monell centers have had regarding men and women odors and their ability to identify them. This also tied in perfectly with this weeks readings and as others have mentioned, the findings reaffirm that men having larger sweat glands may affect a fragrances' ability to block odor. However what I was curious about was the type of fragrances that were used to block underarm odor and if it was the same for both genders? Was the intensity or concentration the same as well? If the hypothesis that women are somehow more attuned with their sense of smell and its "harder to block women's perception of odor" then is that due to a genetic factor? It appears that although the research behind smell is not as common as is for the other senses, it was surprising the work that has been done has played such a vital to the human quality of life such as for health diagnosis and even for something like national defense, such as the landmines. Although not all the questions about the sense of smell have been answered, what has been found points to its importance in our lives and therefore the need to continue in that research.
ReplyDeleteBeatriz Valenzuela
It was really interesting reading this post on the Monell Center! I never knew that such a center existed and it's great to hear that research is being invested on the sense of smell. While reading this I found it interesting that they were researching the use of an electronic nose to sniff out diseases. I think it is a step towards medical advancement as well as a good measure to prevent contracting the disease (because using a real human nose would risk exposure to the disease). I also found the artist residency video at the end interesting, that while humans might have a standard norm of analyzing smells, individuals' DNA can affect subjective perception of the smells. It would be cool to see research on this continue, and possibly companies creating perfumes geared toward particular DNA's in the future.
ReplyDeleteTiffany Chan
It is surprising that such institution as the Monell Chemical Senses Center exists! It clearly tells me that the sense of smell is important and should be researched. How does human sweat help women chose their mates? Are they attracted to a particular smell of sweat of men? I don’t understand what kind of information the sweat conveys that is so important to females. It would be lovely if you expand on this idea! Also, the fact that the visual cortex improves the performance of smelling is very interesting. Is this the same way as being able to taste better when you can smell it? Furthermore, it is surprising that the e-nose is able to detect the smallest amount of biologically cased odor chemicals. This can definitely be used to improve the health of humans.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Richard Doty's article, "Olfactory Communication in Humans," and reading this post on the Monell Chemical Senses Center, I can safely say that I have a much better understanding on the importance that the sense of smell has for the science community. I like how you connected not only Doty's reading to this blog post, but also Keller and Vosshall's article that we also read for this week when you discussed the method behind Monell's research study. In the reading, Keller and Vosshall refer to cross-adaptation when discussing the effect that the chemical Carvone has on the perception of propionic acid. Since the Keller and Vosshall article is really heavy with scientific vocabulary/terms (and science is not my forte)it really made a lot more sense to me when you used clear and concise language to explain its definition. I also find it interesting that you mention that male odor is harder to block than female odor. I found this statement related to Doty's article when he stated that a research study concluded that, "The stronger the odor, the more likely it was to be assigned to males." (356) You overall did a well job giving us an understanding at what goes on inside these special laboratories that focus on the studies of senses.
ReplyDelete