Scientists have only just discovered what the inside of our noses actually look like

How exactly do we smell? Yes, with our nose, nostrils and neurons, but to quote Harvard Medical School scientist Sandeep Datta, “olfaction is super-mysterious”.

Except, Datta and a team of academics have just created the first detailed map of the small receptors found in our noses, which the school says “fills in missing details of how olfaction works” and provides “foundational knowledge needed to develop better therapies for loss of smell”.

Datta said of the study, published in Cell on April 28: “Our results bring order to a system that was previously thought to lack order, which changes conceptually how we think this works.”

The reality is that the aforementioned neurons are pretty organised, in the form of horizontal stripes based on the type of receptor, going down from the top of the nose to the bottom – and the scientists’ receptor map of the nose lines up with the maps in the part of the brain which processes odours: the olfactory bulb.

The researchers used scientific techniques to look at some 5.5 million neurons in more than 300 mice, animals which have around 20 million olfactory neurons which express more than a thousand different types of smell receptors.

They identified which smell receptors were expressed by which neurons in the nose, and where they were located, and found their map of organised receptors was consistent across multiple mice.

But the significance of the study doesn’t just stop at a colourful new map, as it raises questions around why the horizontal stripes mentioned previously are organised in that specific order – something the researchers are now exploring.

““Smell has a really profound and pervasive effect on human health, so restoring it is not just for pleasure and safety but also for psychological well-being.

“Without understanding this map, we’re doomed to fail in developing new treatments,” Datta said.

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