Illustrations by Lorie M. Gavulic, MFA Sponsored by the American Society for Neurochemistry.

Tasting and Smelling presents a comprehensive overview to research on these two important modes of perception. The book offers a review of research findings on the biophysics, neurophysiology, and psychophysicsof both senses, as well as discussing the emotional component associated with taste and smell, and clinical disorders affecting each of these two senses. Tasting and Smelling answers how odors and flavors are perceived, why we have favorites, and what happens when our senses go awry. This book is of interest to the researcher in perception, cognition, or neurophysiology.

The problem of how the brain produces consciousness, subjectivity and 'something it is like to be' remains one of the greatest challenges to a complete science of the natural world. While various scientists and philosophers approach the problem from their own unique perspectives and in the terms of their own respective fields, Biophysics of Consciousness: A Foundational Approach attempts a consilience across disparate disciplines to explain how it is possible that an objective brain produces subjective experience.This volume unites the crème de la crème of physicists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists in the attempt to understand consciousness through a foundational approach encompassing ontological, evolutionary, neurobiological, and Freudian interpretations with the focus on conscious phenomena occurring in the brain. By integrating the perspectives of these diverse disciplines with the latest research and theories on the biophysics of the brain, the book tries to explain how consciousness can be an adaptive and causal element in the natural world.

For as long as anyone can remember, a man named Luca Turin has had an uncanny relationship with smells. He has been compared to the hero of Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume, but his story is in fact stranger, because it is true. It concerns how he made use of his powerful gifts to solve one of the last great mysteries of the human body: how our noses work. Luca Turin can distinguish the components of just about any smell, from the world’s most refined perfumes to the air in a subway car on the Paris metro. A distinguished scientist, he once worked in an unrelated field, though he made a hobby of collecting fragrances. But when, as a lark, he published a collection of his reviews of the world’s perfumes, the book hit the small, insular business of perfume makers like a thunderclap. Who is this man Luca Turin, they demanded, and how does he know so much? The closed community of scent creation opened up to Luca Turin, and he discovered a fact that astonished him: no one in this world knew how smell worked. Billions and billions of dollars were spent creating scents in a manner amounting to glorified trial and error. The solution to the mystery of every other human sense has led to the Nobel Prize, if not vast riches. Why, Luca Turin thought, should smell be any different? So he gave his life to this great puzzle. And in the end, incredibly, it would seem that he solved it. But when enormously powerful interests are threatened and great reputations are at stake, Luca Turin learned, nothing is quite what it seems. Acclaimed writer Chandler Burr has spent four years chronicling Luca Turin’s quest to unravel the mystery of how our sense of smell works. What has emerged is an enthralling, magical book that changes the way we think about that area between our mouth and our eyes, and its profound, secret hold on our lives.

Often being vastly underrated the human sense of smell plays an essential role in our life, e.g. in food acceptance, fragrance appreciation, and as a warning device for spoiled food, toxic gases and the presence of fire. The book provides a multidisciplinary up-to-date review of the structure and function of the sense of smell and of how it is influenced by the environment and diseases. It is divided into the following 5 sections: - Anatomy, Physiology and Chemistry - Measurement of OlfactoryResponses - Development and Senescense - Basic Characteristics of Human Olfaction - Clinical and Health Aspects of Olfaction.

The largest collection of basic, clinical, and applied knowledge on the chemical senses ever compiled in one volume, the third edition of Handbook of Olfaction and Gustation encompass recent developments in all fields of chemosensory science, particularly the most recent advances in neurobiology, neuroscience, molecular biology, and modern functional imaging techniques. Divided into five main sections, the text covers the senses of smell and taste as well as sensory integration, industrial applications, and other chemosensory systems. This is essential reading for clinicians and academic researchers interested in basic and applied chemosensory perception.

International Symposium Series, Volume 1: Olfaction and Taste covers the proceedings of the First International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste, held at the Wenner-Gren Center, Stockholm, Sweden on September 1962. This symposium aims to explore the physiological and psychological aspects of olfaction and taste. This book is composed of 29 chapters and begins with the surveys of the physiology and morphology of the sensory receptors in certain groups of animals. The succeeding chapters describe the fundamental substrates of taste and the effect of temperature change on the response of taste. These topics are followed by discussions on the human taste nerves, taste stimulation and preference behavior, some thalamic and cortical mechanisms of taste, and the role of taste and smell in food and water regulation. The final chapters consider the basic principles of human body’s thermoreceptors and the gustatory relay in the medulla. This book is of great value to researchers in the fields of olfaction and taste and related fields.

If we possessed a true, well established and undoubted theory concerning the function of the nerves in the human body, the principles of smell would be much easier to understand. So far, we do not know for certain whether the action of nerves takes place by means of a subtle fluid, which is instantaneously conveyed from the beginning of the nerves to their ends, or whether, as some think, some sort of vibratory movements is produced in them, or whether the stimulation should be considered as the only sufficient cause, to say nothing of the new opinion concerning the electrical force. Linnaeus Although much has been learned since the time of Linnaeus, it is still true that we do not yet possess "a true, well established and undoubted" theory of olfaction. The literature of the subject, however, has long been rather voluminous - the frequent assertions to the contrary are simply untrue - and is now growing rapidly. Moreover, quite a number of symposia on olfaction (or olfaction and taste) have been held during recent years. For example, in the U. S. A.

Progress in Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry