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page
I. A POWERFUL STENCH

[>]
burning mouth syndrome:
Grushka and Ching, "Burning Mouth Syndrome," in Hummel and Welge-Lussen, eds.,
Taste and Smell,
278–87. Symptoms are extreme burning sensations in the mouth as well as changes in the taste and other sensory systems. Secondary causes may range from a drug allergy to a low thyroid condition to psychosomnia.

2. DIAGNOSIS

[>]
Zicam:
The Zicam Cold Remedy recall was announced by the FDA on June 16, 2009. The first such recall under the Obama administration, it was widely viewed as signaling a shift in regulatory policy toward more consumer protection.

5. AN UNDERLYING LOGIC

[>]
Yoav Gilad sparked:
Gilad et al., "Loss of Olfactory Receptor Genes." Evolution has apparently been disabling olfactory genes in exchange for improvement in other senses; findings in certain primates suggest that the deterioration of their olfactory ability occurred at the same time as their acquisition of color vision. Superior vision in monkeys, as in humans, may have fostered left-brain language skills—also at the expense of smell.

[>]
The prevailing theory:
Burr,
Emperor of Scent,
29, 30.

[>]
glomeruli:
Lin, Shea, and Katz, "Representation of Natural Stimuli." Utilizing gas chromatography to identify specific molecules in an odor compound sniffed by a rat and then using intrinsic signal imaging to map brain activity in response, researchers at Duke showed that each glomerulus responded to one specific odorant only. They hypothesized that "there are no single detectors for complete smells." In other words, the integration of all the individual stimuli is done in more advanced brain structures (the olfactory cortex).
Peter Mombaerts:
Mombaerts, "Love at First Smell." Peter Mombaerts was a postdoc in the Axel lab for many years and is now at Rockefeller University. See also Mombaerts et al., "Structure and Emergence."

6. THE BREAKTHROUGH

[>]
Linda Buck:
Shubin,
Your Inner Fish,
143–44. Neil Shubin describes the assumptions that led to the smell-gene discovery.

[>]
the Austrian philosopher:
Rose,
Lifelines.
In
Lifelines: Life Beyond the Gene,
biologist Steven Rose devotes a chapter to a critique of reductionism (reductionism is the attempt to explain complex systems by reducing them to their smaller, simpler components). Karl Popper, whose system of proving or disproving hypotheses (the scientific method) made him an early proponent of reductionism, was among those who grew to see that when the principle was rigidly applied it was too restrictive. The philosopher Thomas Kuhn, perhaps the most influential of the reductionist reformers, believed that scientists should develop paradigms—overarching theories—of how the world works. This approach is both objective and intuitive. Moreover, new technologies, such as MRI scanners, that allow scientists to observe genetic influences in living creatures have profoundly changed the nature of experimentation itself.
Buck found the genes:
Burr,
Emperor of Scent,
34.

[>]
Axel jokingly calls:
Axel, "Scents and Sensibility." Axel elaborated on this, saying that how any collection of sensory inputs "ultimately elicits appropriate behavioral or cognitive responses is what Vernon Mountcastle has described as 'the big in-between, the ghost in the machine.'"
Scientists have shown:
Groopman, "That Buzzing Sound."

[>]
.
PHANTOMS

[>]
had me wondering:
Frasnelli et al., "Qualitative Olfactory Dysfunction."

[>]
A California psychologist:
Herz,
Scent of Desire,
77–78.
amputees who come home:
See Pasquina et al., "Mirror Therapy for Phantom Limb Pain."

[>]
Oliver Sacks described:
Sacks,
Leg to Stand On,
141.

[>]
Experiments done in European labs:
Blanke and Arzy, "Out-of-Body Experience." Blanke found that he could also "plant" physical sensations in the subjects' extremities at will. The work was done at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland; similar experiments have been conducted at University College London and Princeton University.

[>]
a woman who had:
Gawande, "Itch."

[>]
I decided to find out:
This section is based on e-mails I exchanged with Frasnelli and neurobiologist Don Wilson in June 2007. The ideas that Wilson attributes to Joseph LeDoux are discussed in LeDoux's
Synaptic Self,
especially in chapter 7, "The Mental Trilogy."

[>]
.
THE SCENTLESS DESCENT

[>]
Pain and suffering:
In "Olfactory Dysfunction and Daily Life," Johannes Frasnelli writes that in the few studies that have been done on smell loss and depression, it appears that depression (and related problems) are much more prevalent in people with anosmia and parosmia than they are in the general population. Olfactory improvement almost always parallels a significantly improved satisfaction with life.
Becky Phillips lost:
This is not her real name; it was changed to protect her privacy.