Download or read book The Neurobiology of Olfaction written by Anna Menini and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-11-24 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive Overview of Advances in OlfactionThe common belief is that human smell perception is much reduced compared with other mammals, so that whatever abilities are uncovered and investigated in animal research would have little significance for humans. However, new evidence from a variety of sources indicates this traditional view is likely

Download or read book Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward written by Jay A. Gottfried and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2011-03-28 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synthesizing coverage of sensation and reward into a comprehensive systems overview, Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward presents a cutting-edge and multidisciplinary approach to the interplay of sensory and reward processing in the brain. While over the past 70 years these areas have drifted apart, this book makes a case for reuniting sensation a

Download or read book Neuromorphic Olfaction written by Krishna C. Persaud and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many advances have been made in the last decade in the understanding of the computational principles underlying olfactory system functioning. Neuromorphic Olfaction is a collaboration among European researchers who, through NEUROCHEM (Fp7-Grant Agreement Number 216916)-a challenging and innovative European-funded project-introduce novel computing p

Download or read book The Scent of Desire written by Rachel Herz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Scent of Desire explores our sense of smell in a compelling and engaging manner, from emotions and memory to aromatherapy and pheromones. In this first and definitive book on the psychology of smell, neuroscientist Rachel Herz traces the importance of smell in our lives, from nourishment to procreation to our relationships with the people closest to us and the world. Smell was the very first sense to evolve and is located in the same part of the brain that processes emotion, memory, and motivation. To our ancestors, the sense of smell wasn't just important, it was crucial to existence and it remains so today. Our emotional, physical, even sexual lives are profoundly shaped by both our reactions to and interpretations of different smells. Herz examines the role smell plays in our lives, and how this most essential of senses is imperative to our well-being, investigating how our sense of smell functions, what purpose it serves, and shows how inextricably it is linked to our survival. She introduces us to people who have lost their ability to smell and shows how their experiences confirm this sense's importance by illuminating the traumatic effect its loss has on the quality of day-to-day living. Herz illustrates how profoundly scent and the sense of smell affect our daily lives with numerous examples and personal accounts based on her years of research. For anyone who has ever wondered about human nature or been curious about the secrets of both the body and the mind, The Scent of Desire is a fascinating, down-to-earth tour of the psychology and biology of our most neglected sense, the sense of smell.

Download or read book Smellosophy written by A. S. Barwich and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NRC Handelsblad Book of the Year “Offers rich discussions of olfactory perception, the conscious and subconscious impacts of smell on behavior and emotion.” —Science Decades of cognition research have shown that external stimuli “spark” neural patterns in particular regions of the brain. We think of the brain as a space we can map: here it responds to faces, there it perceives a sensation. But the sense of smell—only recently attracting broader attention in neuroscience—doesn’t work this way. So what does the nose tell the brain, and how does the brain understand it? A. S. Barwich turned to experts in neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, and perfumery in an effort to understand the mechanics and meaning of odors. She discovered that scents are often fickle, and do not line up with well-defined neural regions. Upending existing theories of perception, Smellosophy offers a new model for understanding how the brain senses and processes odors. “A beguiling analysis of olfactory experience that is fast becoming a core reference work in the field.” —Irish Times “Lively, authoritative...Aims to rehabilitate smell’s neglected and marginalized status.” —Wall Street Journal “This is a special book...It teaches readers a lot about olfaction. It teaches us even more about what philosophy can be.” —Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book The Neurology of Olfaction written by Christopher H. Hawkes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-12 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Written by two experts in the field, this book provides information useful to physicians for assessing and managing chemosensory disorders - with appropriate case-histories - and summarizes the current scientific knowledge of human olfaction. It will be of particular interest to neurologists, otolaryngologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Learning to Smell written by Donald A. Wilson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-06-06 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book Neurobiology of Chemical Communication written by Carla Mucignat-Caretta and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intraspecific communication involves the activation of chemoreceptors and subsequent activation of different central areas that coordinate the responses of the entire organism—ranging from behavioral modification to modulation of hormones release. Animals emit intraspecific chemical signals, often referred to as pheromones, to advertise their presence to members of the same species and to regulate interactions aimed at establishing and regulating social and reproductive bonds. In the last two decades, scientists have developed a greater understanding of the neural processing of these chemical signals. Neurobiology of Chemical Communication explores the role of the chemical senses in mediating intraspecific communication. Providing an up-to-date outline of the most recent advances in the field, it presents data from laboratory and wild species, ranging from invertebrates to vertebrates, from insects to humans. The book examines the structure, anatomy, electrophysiology, and molecular biology of pheromones. It discusses how chemical signals work on different mammalian and non-mammalian species and includes chapters on insects, Drosophila, honey bees, amphibians, mice, tigers, and cattle. It also explores the controversial topic of human pheromones. An essential reference for students and researchers in the field of pheromones, this is also an ideal resource for those working on behavioral phenotyping of animal models and persons interested in the biology/ecology of wild and domestic species.

Download or read book The Sense of Smell in the Middle Ages written by Katelynn Robinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-09 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Odors, including those of incense, spices, cooking, and refuse, were both ubiquitous and meaningful in central and late medieval Western Europe. The significance of the sense of smell is evident in scholastic Latin texts, most of which are untranslated and unedited by modern scholars. Between the late eleventh and thirteenth century, medieval scholars developed a logical theory of the workings of the sense of smell based on Greek and Arabic learning. In the thirteenth through fifteenth century, medical authors detailed practical applications of smell theory and these were communicated to individuals and governing authorities by the medical profession in the interests of personal and public health. At the same time, religious authors read philosophical and medical texts and gave their information religious meaning. This reinterpretation of scholastic philosophy and medicine led to the development of what can be termed a medically aware theology of smell that was communicated to popular audiences alongside traditional olfactory theory in sermons. Its impact on popular thought is reflected in late medieval mystical texts. While the senses have received increasing scholarly attention in recent decades, this volume presents the first detailed research into the sense of smell in the later European Middle Ages.

Download or read book The Perception of Odors written by Trygg Engen and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Perception of Odors presents concisely and clearly some of the important aspects in the study of olfaction such as perception, human pheromones, and odor pollution. The book consists of 11 detailed chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 serve as the introduction as it outlines the basic principles, historical development, and the anatomy and physiology of olfaction. A chapter on """"Psychophysics"""" is included wherein it covers the history of the measurement of odors and developments in the psychophysics of smell. The following chapters deal mostly with areas of research such as odor masking, deodo ...

Download or read book The Hidden Power of Smell written by Paul A. Moore and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main purpose of the book is to provide insight into an area that humans often take for granted. There are wonderful and exciting stories of organisms using chemical signals as a basis of a sophisticated communication system. In many instances, chemical signals can provide more detailed and accurate information than any other mode of communication, yet this world is hidden from us because of our focus on visual and auditory signals.​ Although we have a diversity of senses available to us, humans are primarily auditory and visual animals. These stimuli are sent to the more cognitive areas of our brain where they are immediately processed for information. We use sounds to communicate and music to excite or soothe us. Our vision provides us with communication, entertainment, and information about our world. Even though our world is dominated by other stimulus energies, we have chosen, in an evolutionary sense, either auditory or visual signals to carry our most important information. This is not the case for most other organisms. Chemical signals, mediated through the sense of smell and taste, are typically more important and are used more often than other sensory signals. The world of communication using chemicals is an alien world for us. We are unaware of how important chemical signals are to other organisms and we often overlook the influence of chemical signals in our own life. Part of this naïveté about chemical signals is due to our cultural focus on visual and auditory signals, but a larger part of our collective ignorance is the lack of information about chemical communication in both popular and scientific writings. The popular press and popular writings virtually ignore the chemical senses, especially in regard to their role or influence for humans and our human culture. Academic books and textbooks are no better.

Download or read book The Smell of Risk written by Hsuan L. Hsu and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely exploration of how odor seeps into structural inequality Our sense of smell is a uniquely visceral—and personal—form of experience. As Hsuan L. Hsu points out, smell has long been spurned by Western aesthetics as a lesser sense for its qualities of subjectivity, volatility, and materiality. But it is these very qualities that make olfaction a vital tool for sensing and staging environmental risk and inequality. Unlike the other senses, smell extends across space and reaches into our bodies. Hsu traces how writers, artists, and activists have deployed these embodied, biochemical qualities of smell in their efforts to critique and reshape modernity’s olfactory disparities. The Smell of Risk outlines the many ways that our differentiated atmospheres unevenly distribute environmental risk. Reading everything from nineteenth-century detective fiction and naturalist novels to contemporary performance art and memoir, Hsu takes up modernity’s differentiated atmospheres as a subject worth sniffing out. From the industrial revolution to current-day environmental crises, Hsu uses ecocriticism, geography, and critical race studies to, for example, explore Latinx communities exposed to freeway exhaust and pesticides, Asian diasporic artists’ response to racialized discourse about Asiatic odors, and the devastation settler colonialism has reaped on Indigenous smellscapes. In each instance, Hsu demonstrates the violence that air maintenance, control, and conditioning enacts on the poor and the marginalized. From nineteenth-century miasma theory theory to the synthetic chemicals that pervade twenty-first century air, Hsu takes smell at face value to offer an evocative retelling of urbanization, public health, and environmental violence.

Download or read book The Emperor of Scent written by Chandler Burr and published by Random House. This book was released on 2003-01-21 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For as long as anyone can remember, a man named Luca Turin has had an uncanny relationship with smells. He has been compared to the hero of Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume, but his story is in fact stranger, because it is true. It concerns how he made use of his powerful gifts to solve one of the last great mysteries of the human body: how our noses work. Luca Turin can distinguish the components of just about any smell, from the world’s most refined perfumes to the air in a subway car on the Paris metro. A distinguished scientist, he once worked in an unrelated field, though he made a hobby of collecting fragrances. But when, as a lark, he published a collection of his reviews of the world’s perfumes, the book hit the small, insular business of perfume makers like a thunderclap. Who is this man Luca Turin, they demanded, and how does he know so much? The closed community of scent creation opened up to Luca Turin, and he discovered a fact that astonished him: no one in this world knew how smell worked. Billions and billions of dollars were spent creating scents in a manner amounting to glorified trial and error. The solution to the mystery of every other human sense has led to the Nobel Prize, if not vast riches. Why, Luca Turin thought, should smell be any different? So he gave his life to this great puzzle. And in the end, incredibly, it would seem that he solved it. But when enormously powerful interests are threatened and great reputations are at stake, Luca Turin learned, nothing is quite what it seems. Acclaimed writer Chandler Burr has spent four years chronicling Luca Turin’s quest to unravel the mystery of how our sense of smell works. What has emerged is an enthralling, magical book that changes the way we think about that area between our mouth and our eyes, and its profound, secret hold on our lives.

Download or read book David Smells written by David Shannon and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David explores his world using all of his five senses.

Download or read book Art Scents written by Larry E. Shiner and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last twenty years there has been a marked increase in artists using smells in their works at the same time that scents are being used to accompany plays, films, and music. There is also an increase in ambient scenting in stores and hotels and leading chefs are adding unusual scents to cuisine. The book explores these olfactory activities and the aesthetic and ethical issues they raise as well as answering the traditional disparagement of the sense of smell by leading intellectuals such as Kant, Darwin, and Freud, drawing on current science, social science, and humanities as well as literature.

Download or read book Past Scents written by Jonathan Reinarz and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2014-03-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive and engaging volume, medical historian Jonathan Reinarz offers a historiography of smell from ancient to modern times. Synthesizing existing scholarship in the field, he shows how people have relied on their olfactory sense to understand and engage with both their immediate environments and wider corporal and spiritual worlds. This broad survey demonstrates how each community or commodity possesses, or has been thought to possess, its own peculiar scent. Through the meanings associated with smells, osmologies develop--what cultural anthropologists have termed the systems that utilize smells to classify people and objects in ways that define their relations to each other and their relative values within a particular culture. European Christians, for instance, relied on their noses to differentiate Christians from heathens, whites from people of color, women from men, virgins from harlots, artisans from aristocracy, and pollution from perfume. This reliance on smell was not limited to the global North. Around the world, Reinarz shows, people used scents to signify individual and group identity in a morally constructed universe where the good smelled pleasant and their opposites reeked. With chapters including "Heavenly Scents," "Fragrant Lucre," and "Odorous Others," Reinarz's timely survey is a useful and entertaining look at the history of one of our most important but least-understood senses.

Download or read book Basic Neurochemistry written by George J. Siegel and published by Lippincott Raven. This book was released on 1999 with total page 1216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrations by Lorie M. Gavulic, MFA Sponsored by the American Society for Neurochemistry.