He smell It’s a feeling that we don’t give all the importance to. Only people with anosmia know the true seriousness of a lack of odor recognition. It’s not just a matter of not enjoying the smell of coffee or wet earth. It’s also about not smelling a gas leak or something burning. But if we downplay our sense of smell, the importance we place on smells becomes even less important. Everything a smell can say about something or someone. The latter is so important that it has even been noted that, just like we all have fingerprints, we have olfactory trace.
This could help find us if we get lost, or identify a killer at a crime scene. It can also indicate whether we are sick, or even whether we drink alcohol to excess. We tend to think that the fact that a person smells no perfumes or deodorants, this is something bad. But in reality, we all do it. Each of us has an olfactory fingerprint.
This is something that has been studied a lot lately. Although the science of odorology It has been under investigation since 1976., it was in recent years that he made a big step forward. The application of human olfactory fingerprints is being considered with much greater force, so more and more scientists are working to optimize its implementation. But what are these apps? What is the characteristic smell of each person?
The Importance of the Olfactory Fingerprint
skin glands They emit substances that, in fact, smell almost nothing. However, as a result of the metabolism of microorganisms living in it, other, much more odorous compounds are formed. Right here olfactory trace.
Compound skin microbiota It is unique for each person. Two people can have the same types of bacteria, but in different proportions. The substances that these bacteria have to metabolize are also different. They depend, for example, on feeding and habits like alcohol or tobacco use. If we add to all this that genetic reasonsour body also releases a specific combination of chemicals, as a result, the only people who smell exactly the same are identical twins.
Due to this, the use of the olfactory fingerprint is beginning to be explored as a very interesting biomarker in forensic science. IN Hypertext we talked about this with Laura Lopez-Mascarac, CSIC neuroscientist and co-founder of the Spanish Olfactory Network. “It is difficult to hide the olfactory trace,” says the researcher. “Gloves can hide fingerprints, but not olfactory prints, so they can give you the most accurate profile possible.”
We might think that the olfactory trace can be hidden. Not with gloves, but with perfume or even diet change. After all, we’ve seen that what we eat affects how we smell. But this does not change our basal olfactory trace. “We all seem to have a basic fingerprint, regardless of everything that influences the smell we emit and the olfactory recordings that each person has.” It is true that changes occur, for example, through “perfume, food or disease.” This even changes with age. “But research shows there is a basis that can be identified.”
How can it be used?
Collecting fingerprints from a crime scene is not difficult. But how are olfactory fingerprints collected? This, in fact, can also be done in a simple way. For this purpose, there are odor-absorbing fabrics that are placed on the surfaces to be analyzed and impregnated with volatile substances associated with odors that may have adhered to them.
They are then analyzed by other scientists than the ones who collected the sample. In this way, possible contamination can be avoided.
Ultimately, olfactory imprint This is the future, although it is already beginning to be used in the present. After all, dogs have recognized us all our lives by our smell. It took us a long time to determine the importance of crime scene analysis.
You can read about this and much more related to the sense of smell in two books published by CSIC. What do we know? Smellwritten by Laura Lopez-Mascaraque and neuroscientist José Ramon Alonso, and children’s book Smell. Fragrances, essences, stench and epidemicswritten by Berta Páramo and reviewed by López-Mascaraque.
Source: Hiper Textual
