A new study has found that the human sense of smell can distinguish odours within a fraction of a second. This study refutes the common belief that our sense of smell is slow. The study was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour and conducted by researchers from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ohio State University.

The study says that humans can differentiate between various sequences of odours, distinguishing a sequence of “A” before “B” from sequence “B” before “A”, when the interval between odorant A and odorant B is merely 60 milliseconds.

Dr Wen Zhou, lead author of the study and a principal investigator at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said in an email, “We were astonished to observe that participants could distinguish between two odorants presented in one order and the reverse when the latency between the odorants was as short as 60 milliseconds.” Latency refers to the time between when each scent is delivered. Zhou added, “For comparison, the duration of an eye blink is about 180 milliseconds.”

Zhou said, “Our apparatus could be used for therapeutic purposes, such as olfactory training for patients with olfactory loss. More broadly, our findings could guide the design and development of electronic noses and olfactory virtual reality systems, which could have significant clinical benefits.”

According to a report in CNN, the researchers developed a sniff-triggered apparatus that included check valves which are devices that allow odour to flow in one direction and Teflon tubes which are capable of delivering odours to the human nose with a precision of 18 milliseconds.

The researchers asked 229 adults in China to wear this device and smell different odour mixtures; two odours presented in quick succession within a single sniff. The odours included apple-like scents, sweet floral scents, lemon-like scents and onion-like scents. The latency between the two odours was carefully manipulated.

The researchers analyzed whether participants could distinguish between two odours presented in one order and the reverse at different latencies. Zhou said that they found that overall, two odours presented in one order and the reverse became “perceptually discriminable” when the two odours were only 60 milliseconds apart within a single sniff.

The researchers added that they used only four odourants and that it would be beneficial to test a wider variety to understand whether the human sense of smell is more sensitive to certain odour dynamics or compounds.

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