Is there some relationship between the senses of taste smell, really?

Factual Questions
1

I grew up not knowing that I was anosmic.

How do you know? Someone sticks flowers in your face and says “Isn’t that nice?” You say “yes.” But I couldn’t tell if someone was wearing perfume, or if someone forgot to flush the toilet or if the cat litter needed cleaning…

Well, there were some smells I could detect, but I couldn’t really recognize them. Like ammonia. I can’t detect the signature hydrogen sulfide smell they put in propane tanks, can’t smell something burning, etc.

In VietNam we used to burn our fecal waste in cut-off 50 gallon cans. Everyone alway complained about shit-burning detail, but I never minded, and used to trade with guys when I had a detail I didn’t like.

In college, I volunteered for a study on the sense of smell. After the 2nd visit the researcher said, “How long have you been anosmic?” I explained that I didn’t know what he was talking about, but that I been this way as long as I remember. He told me I have no ability to distinguish one smell from another, and have problems detecting smells at all, and what I think of as “ammonia” smell is probably just irritation of my nasal linings.

Since my move to Hawii, I have found out that there are two tropical flowers that I can smell, and I love the fragrances: white ginger and Greene’s ginger. FWIW.

Oh. Okay.

Then I remember reading or hearing that your sense of taste is dependent upon your sense of smell, that if you can’t smell, you can’t taste.

But I can taste! I can recognize and identify sweet, sour, bitter. I can appreciate the tastes of food and distinguish the differences easily (like between lamb, pork and veal; peaches and pears, etc.). I have lots of favorite foods and many I don’t like the taste of. I can distinguish different wines by taste (but not by bouquet).

Funny thing, though, sacharrin (sp?) does not taste sweet to me. It tastes bitter. I haven’t rated the other artificial sweetners (yet), I’ve just avoided them.

So how come I can taste but I can’t smell?

Oh, an interesting side note. About 12 years ago, out of the blue, I started having seizures. It started with petit mal, but progressed up to tonic-clonic. No reason was ever discovered for my seizures (not neurological), and they eventually abated, but before a seizure onset I would smell a sweet, but unfamiliar odor that no one else could detect. It would pass, and I would seize.

Doctors still cannot explain why I had seizures; and I saw MDs, neurologists, physiatrists, psychologists and probably a few others I forget.

2

Smell and taste are very strongly linked especially for complex flavours. But the basic tastes of bitter, sweet, salty and sour are controlled by the taste buds on your tongue. The taste buds are oriented on your tongue according to taste. The tip of your tongue detects sweetness. The rear detects bitterness, the sides sour and everywhere can detect salty. There is an old elementary school science experiment where you dip a Q-tip in a flavour solution and touch it to the different areas of your tongue to see if you can detect the taste.

The rest of taste is dominated by your olfactory nerve, which is why people often plug their nose while trying to eat or drink something particulary foul.
As for seizures, many people report a strong smell before having a seizure. I believe the most common smell is that of “burnt toast”.

3

I’ve lost most of my sense of smell over the years and as a result I can’t taste all that much.

Here is a site onthe taste-smell connection.

Notice that salty, bitter, sweet and sour are pretty much independent of smell.

4

Thanks for the quick responses! And the informative site.

I can distinguish complex tastes, however, beyond just swwet, sour, bitter, salt. I can distinguish fatty tastes, too, and complex flavors, enough to be able to identify things by taste. (I can tell a raspberry from a strawberry by taste!)

But how can I know if what a so-called “normal” taste is what I’m tasting. I can’t. I’m enthralled by the complex joyousness of the tastes of meats, sauces, herbs, cheezes, veggies, breads, fruits (I especially love avocado, and mango). But how can I ever know if what I taste is what you taste. I can’t. It’s not like sight or hearing, or even touch!

Maybe I’m just wierd (75% of this MB would agree anyway, as would I: my Venusian foster-parents were always after me to shield my nose from the extremely HS-permeated hydrated heat), or perhaps my smell isn’t as impaired as the doctors think? maybe I have ‘marginal smell’ rather than anosmia.

(Interesting, too, that the temporal lobe, where smells are stored, is sometimes a causitive component of seizures!)

More input welcome!!!

SnakeS

5

Another interesting afterthought:

I recently bought a ProZone air purifier. Works on the principle that generating O³ (Ozone) and inserting it into the room will cause it to bond to (oxidize) pos charged pollutants. Works pretty good, the family says he cat litter smells better, my son says the room smells like a “burning unscented candle” or a “freshly opened soda” - which I interpret as CO²!

I can’t tell the difference except that the room smells “fresher, cooler.” FWIW.

6

Colds have caused me to lose my sense of smell on a few occasions. It made some foods lose their flavour, becoming boring, and caused me to lose my appetite somewhat. Generally I could still enjoy sugary fatty foods (doughnuts!!) and spicy garlicky stuff (curry, chili) though they would not be as savoury. Note that the concept of savoury is linked to smell. I don’t really remember what the effect is on the taste of fruit but I always eat a lot of oranges when I have a cold. I found it to be a real pain to have no sense of smell and a big relief when it came back but of course that’s the loss of something I’m used to.

7

I think you must have some sense of smell, SnakeSpirit – how else could you smell some of the ginger flowers? And you can taste differences in foods, too, apparently.

This reminds me of an interesting experience I recently had where I tried one of the Cold-Eez … I think that’s how it’s spelled … zinc lozenges that are supposed to prevent colds. (I don’t know if they do or not; I was taking it just in case, since it wasn’t going to get used otherwise.) Anyway, so I sucked on the thing for a bit and let it dissolve.

A little while later, I went to eat some chocolate ice cream, and discovered that it tasted horrible – like sour milk. I took one bite and sputtered it out all over the floor. I thought this was odd, and took a drink of water. It tasted peculiar … not necessarily bad, but not good either. So I decided to drink some orange juice instead.

BLECH! It was extremely bitter and awful. “What’s going on?” I wondered.

I experimented with a variety of foods and discovered that the sensation of sweetness was entirely gone. Anything I ate, I was tasting everything except the sweet component. And it made almost everything taste pretty bad.

It lasted for hours, until finally my sense of sweetness came back. What was up with that?

8

Do you know if tastes are also stored in the temporal lobe?

If smell has something to do with taste, is the smell element of taste stored in the temporal w/ all other smells, or is it stored in some other part w/ all other tastes?

If the latter, this could have something to do w/ why you can’t smell but you can taste–your nose can smell, but your brain doesn’t process smells all by themselves correctly. But maybe it does process smells in the context of tastes correctly!

-Kris

9

I think this is an interesting question for all of us. Taste (and smell) being such a subjective experience I don’t know if you can say there is a “normal” taste for anything…normal for who?
I’m thinking of cilantro, for instance. Lots of people love it but I know a minority (I am one) for whom it just tastes awful, not at all like something anyone would want to eat.

10

Classic philosophical question: When I like pickles and my wife doesn’t, what she is sensing is different than what I am sensing, or is it that we are both sensing the same thing and we just have different attitudes towards it?

I think the answer is that it’s strictly speaking a mistake to talk about “the taste” of anything, in and of itself. There’s my taste of it, you’re taste of it, and the cat’s taste of it, and so on, but I think no such thing as just it’s taste independent of who’s tasting it.

So there is no question why I like pickles and my wife doesn’t, as the question is usually concieved–for my tasting the pickle and her tasting it are not the kinds of thing it is appropriate to compare for such purposes. They’re just two completely different things.

-FrL-

11

The NY Times magazine had an essay by a woman who lost her sense of smell, or at least had it severely damaged.

It started to come back, but things didn’t smell the way she remembered them to. Her doctor suggested that she retrain her brain/nose. She would deliberately expose herself to an odor and think to herself “this is what freshly ground coffee smells like.” Or she’d ask her companions what they were smelling.

She claimed that it helped and gradually the smells she was able to distinguish increased. Maybe she had to reroute neural pathways or something?