Welcome to the olfactory gymnasium

It’s astonishing how dull and meaningless the world becomes when we lose our sense of smell. Think back to when a congested nose from a cold reduced all flavours to near zero and when food became nothing more than functional sustenance. At such times, even whisky is reduced to simply medicinal relief, most commonly compounded with honey, lemon and hot water.

For some, anosmia – the complete loss of the sense of smell – is a daily reality. However, hyposmia, a diminished sense of smell, comes to us all with age.

But it’s not all bad news, and the Society is here to help you not only keep your nose in tip top condition, but potentially stave off other degenerative conditions. That’s because a growing body of research suggests we can exercise our sense of smell in a similar way to working out at the gym. So join me as we swap dumbbells for sweet smells, and trade jogging miles for whisky volatiles. It’s time to join the olfactory gymnasium.

ANCIENT CIRCUITRY AND EMOTIONAL AROMAS

Smell is quietly one of the most influential senses we have. It steers what we eat, how we feel and even how we remember our lives. For example, studies suggest that that the smell of lavender has a powerful stress relief effect (Toda & Morimoto, 2008). Even subthreshold odours such as pheromones have been shown to influence mood and behaviour (Mujica-Parodi, 2008).

More obvious examples come from simple, everyday experiences. That coffee in the morning. The bakery you stroll past each day. Those nostalgic sweets that whisk you back to your childhood in an instant. Odours are intimately intertwined with memories and emotions. It’s simply the way our brains are wired.

The sense of smell is amongst the earliest of the vertebrate senses to develop. Hence, the neural processing of odours incorporates the brain’s most ancient circuitry – the limbic system. Here, brain regions such as the hippocampus and amygdala process not just odours but memory formation, recall and emotional value. It’s why a single smell can initiate a powerful and emotive response in an instant.

SNIFFING OUT EMOTIONAL CATALYSTS

Such responses don’t just happen by accident. While we only become aware of specific smells when they stand out, behind the scenes the brain is constantly busy analysing your surroundings. In fact, people with a normal sense of smell make around 240 additional environment-scanning sniffs each hour, without ever being aware of it (Gorodisky et al, 2024).

This is why subthreshold odours such as pheromones can be so powerful. It’s why supermarkets are keen for wafts from the instore bakery to proliferate throughout the shop. And why, when selling your home, it’s always prudent to have a pot of coffee on the go. Odours are emotional catalysts that strike to the very heart of the subconscious brain.

Therefore, we can begin to see why smelling is fundamental to all aspects of life. The tight connection between odours, emotions and memories is demonstrated by how olfactory dysfunction is associated with profound reductions in overall wellbeing and cognitive function (Fatuzzo et al, 2023). In fact, olfactory decline is commonly used to diagnose neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

CHALLENGING THOSE NEURONS

Neurodegenerative disorders are so devastating because most neurons you are born with last a lifetime and are not replaced if lost or damaged, especially in the central nervous system. However, the olfactory system is both resilient and unique because it keeps making neurons throughout life (Brann & Firestein 2014).

This is exciting news for flavour explorers. The adult olfactory bulb remains one of the few brain regions where new neurons are continually produced and integrated throughout your lifetime. As an extension of the brain, the olfactory bulb plays a central role in organising and relaying nerve signals from our smell receptors.

A study by Lledo, Alonso and Grubb (2006) showed that thousands of new neurons are born in the olfactory bulb daily. But they don’t automatically stick around. Their survival depends on how much ‘work’ they do. If you challenge your sense of smell, especially in meaningful or complex ways, those neurons are more likely to become permanent parts of your sensory system.

BENEFITS TO THE OLFACTORY BULB

Such research suggests that putting your smelling hardware through a workout on a regular basis may not only improve the longevity of neurons in key areas, but it may also increase them. So, in the same way we can build muscle mass by working out, we may be able to build our olfactory circuitry too. For example, smell training has even been shown to increase the volume of the olfactory bulb in wine experts (Filiz et al, 2022).

Researchers followed sommelier students over 18 months as they went through olfactory training, and compared them with untrained students, measuring changes in brain structure and olfactory ability. They found that sommelier training was associated with an increase in olfactory bulb volume, plus there were changes in cortical thickness within five brain regions associated with olfactory processing.

A paper by Loughnane et al (2024) researched a total of 23 studies that looked into how olfactory training may slow neurodegenerative decline. Their conclusions were that training your sense of smell provides multiple benefits to older adults. Such training was associated with measurable improvements in not just olfactory performance, but also in cognitive function such as verbal fluency, working memory and reduced depressive symptoms. But what does this mean for you?

SOCIETY DRAMS AS OLFACTORY DUMBBELLS

Olfactory training in such research studies is nothing complicated. Most commonly, participants are presented with a selection of specific odour samples and instructed to sniff them at set intervals. The tasks are normally to differentiate one smell from another, and/or to identify what it is. The latter part provides a workout for regions of the brain associated with semantics and language.

As it would seem, the odours themselves are not important, but variety is. In fact, a 2008 study by Veyrac et al, although featuring mice, demonstrated how repeated daily exposure to single novel odorants improved the olfactory memory and neurogenesis in the mouse olfactory bulb. In short, smelling new and interesting things may be very healthy for your brain.

It’s at this point we can connect the dots to smelling Society drams. As Outturns continuously present a range of unusual, novel and obscure aromas, could they become more than just a dram? Could Society whiskies be a tool for not only improving olfactory function, but also as a method for improving cognitive function and wellbeing as well?

TIME TO HIT THE OLFACTORY GYM

Naturally there is a critical point we must address. The cognitive and neurogenic benefits come from olfactory and sensory exposure, not from drinking large amounts. Alcohol consumption carries well-documented risks, and any such approach must emphasise small volumes, infrequent ingestion or sniffing whisky only.

However, it’s clear that smell is far more than a garnish on experience. It is a portal to emotion and memory, a predictor of brain health and a trainable faculty that is connected to brain plasticity. By deliberately engaging novelty, variety, naming and multisensory context, we can strengthen olfactory circuits and the connections that support memory recall, mood regulation and some cognitive functions.

So rather than viewing everyday odours as background smells, see them as an olfactory gymnasium. An opportunity to give your sense of smell and your brain a workout. Of course, a happy by-product will be elevated skill in nosing whisky and naming those smells too.

REFERENCES

Brann, J. H., & Firestein, S. J. (2014). A lifetime of neurogenesis in the olfactory system. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 8.
Fatuzzo, I., Niccolini, G. F., Zoccali, F., Cavalcanti, L., Bellizzi, M. G., Riccardi, G., de Vincentiis, M., Fiore, M., Petrella, C., Minni, A., & Barbato, C. (2023). Neurons, nose, and neurodegenerative diseases: Olfactory function and cognitive impairment. International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
Filiz, G., Poupon, D., Banks, S., Fernandez, P., & Frasnelli, J. (2022). Olfactory bulb volume and cortical thickness evolve during sommelier training. Human Brain Mapping, 43(8).
Gorodisky, L., Honigstein, D., Weissbrod, A., Weissgross, R., Soroka, T., Shushan, S., & Sobel, N. (2024). Humans without a sense of smell breathe differently. Nature Communications, 15.
Lledo, P.-M., Valley, M. (2016). Adult olfactory bulb neurogenesis. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology.
Loughnane, M. (2024). Aging and olfactory training: A scoping review. Innovation in Aging, 8(6).
Mujica-Parodi, L. R., Strey, H. H., Frederick, B. D. B., & Savoy, R. L. (2008). Second-hand stress: Neurobiological evidence for a human alarm pheromone. Nature Precedings, 3.
Toda,M., & Morimoto, K. (2008). Effect of lavender aroma on salivary endocrinological stress markers. Archives of Oral Biology.
Veyrac, A., Sacquet, J., Nguyen, V., Marien, M., Jourdan, F., & Didier, A. (2009). Novelty determines the effects of olfactory enrichment on memory and neurogenesis through noradrenergic mechanisms. Neuropsychopharmacology.