By the evening edition.
Our olfactory system obscures our own smell, that of our interior, or the perfume we put on in the morning. And it’s not for nothing. We explain why in “the not-so-stupid question”, the daily podcast meeting of the evening edition.
We each have our own body odor. If we are sensitive to that of others, ours generally seems odorless to us. Unless it’s time to take a shower… This mechanism is linked to our “olfactory adaptation process, a vital phenomenon”, explains Anne-Marie Mouly, neuroscientist at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, in Science and Life.
By being exposed to a particular smell, we unconsciously no longer smell it. This is the case with our body odor, which we carry since birth, with the perfume we put on in the morning and which we end up no longer smelling, or even with the smell of our interior. What is going on ?
Read also: “A unique case”: deprived of taste and smell for 33 years, he suddenly regains these two senses
Essential to our survival
When we breathe, odorous molecules enter our nose and stimulate olfactory receptors. Then, the olfactory nerve sends a message to the brain where neurons specialized in smell analyze this smell. Permanently stimulated by our own smell, these olfactory receptors end up no longer being sensitive to it. “This adaptation somehow turns off the olfactory receptors stimulated by the scent in question – via molecular mechanisms that are still poorly understood. Result: we no longer smell the smell,” specifies Anne-Marie Mouly.
Thus, as familiar odors are masked, this allows us to quickly detect new, potentially dangerous odors such as the smell of spoiled food, gas or burning. This mechanism of smell, also present in animals, is therefore essential to our survival.
