19:0021:0023:0001:0003:0005:0007:0009:0011:0013:0015:0017:00LESSSmell sensitivityMOREPredicted Average Peak Smell Sensitivity
Individual Peak Smell SensitivityCIRCADIAN CYCLE
24-hr Clock TimeApril 2018^ DISCOVER^21Our sense of smell is often underappreciated:
It triggers some of our most emotional
memories, and we’re a lot better at sniffing
things out than we think. And now it seems
we might be at our olfactory best at
certain times of the day. Researchers
from Brown University and the E.P.
Bradley Hospital Sleep Research
Laboratory in Rhode Island studied
the sleep cycles of 37 adolescents,
aged 12 to 15, in the lab for a
week. The team found that, over
the course of each volunteer’s
natural sleep/wake cycle, they
had a window of time in which
their sense of smell was most
sensitive. Each child’s peak
window was different, as was
their level of sensitivity. But
these periods were consistent
for each individual over the
course of the week. Though the
work has some obvious limitations,
such as the age and number of
participants, it helps peel back more
of the mysterious layers surrounding
our most primitive sense.
When the Nose Knows Best
“DNA can give you a pretty good idea of an individual’s ancestors.
And more and more now, you can reconstruct an individual’s
eye and hair color, the facial features. If you have a skull as well,
you can create a good picture of what someone looked like, not
perfect, of course, but close enough that someone who knew
them would probably be able to recognize them.”
— Ellen Røyrvik, geneticist at the University of BergenSource: “The Influence of Circadian Timing on Olfactory Sensitivity,” Chemical Senses, 2017.