Enriching Education: Our Nose Smells

If anyone know how to pinpoint the stinkiest, smelliest scents, it’s Dr. Rachel Herz. She is a neuroscientist and leading world expert on the psychological science of smell. She’s also one of the judges for this year’s National Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest.

I had a chance to post an interview with her to talk about how she sniffs out different smells in the annual contest. She’ll be joined by this year’s winner who will let you know just how they got their sneakers so smelly!

Scientists thought that the human nose could only detect about 10,000 different smells, but recently that number increased dramatically to approximately one trillion distinct scents.


Dr Herz has been conducting research on the sense of smell, emotion, perception, motivated behavior and cognition since 1990.  She has several books including The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell, which was selected as a finalist for the 2009 AAAS Prize for Excellence in Science Books and That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion. Her latest book Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food, explores how our senses and psychology govern our perception of food, and the experiences and consequences of eating.


* This interview opportunity is provided by Odor-Eaters