The peanut butter test for Alzheimer's

[deltasigma]

@Napier

You’re right, I should have read the whole article. But when I did, I didn’t see anything in the article that fixes this question.

Though, it’s a pleasant article more or less advertising the school, it’s not a scientific paper. As pleasant articles go it seems competent enough.

This would be in the category of medical research, not for example fluid dynamics research. If holding things different distances from the nose is already an established test method with various problems worked out and good practices well known, it’s probably fine. But if the cleverness of a simple smelling distance test is novel here, I wonder how room air currents get accounted for. No doubt we all have the experience of people near one another, one of whom smells something strongly while the other doesn’t.

When I said you should read the article, I was referring to the comment that it wasn’t hard science and was referring to the next to the last paragraph. That’s a little vague though to someone reading just this article as I’d had the benefit of reading another before this one but chose this one to cite since it was the source.

Here, this might help you out and supports what bibliophage mentioned

That’s thanks to its status as a ‘pure odorant,’ meaning its smell is detected exclusively by our olfactory nerve. Most smells are also detected with our trigeminal nerve, which is responsible for sensation in the face.

But it’s the olfactory nerve that’s important in Alzheimer’s research. Degradation in the olfactory center of the brain is one of the first signs of the disease, but detecting it isn’t easy.

[Hari_Seldon]

@friedo

You don’t have to know why a correlation exists to prove that it exists.

Doesn’t each nostril go to a different hemisphere of the brain, like your eyes and ears? I believe it’s well known that Alzheimer’s is correlated with problems in the corpus callosum.

So it is conceivable that the problem is not so much in detecting the odor as in getting the information to the left brain (where nearly everybody’s speech centers are located). People’s who corpus callosum has been severed, for whatever reason, but sometimes to control epilepsy, have been tested by allowing them to see only with the right half of each eye that goes to the right brain (is that correct? If not reverse right and left) and they react appropriately to some visual stimulus, but when asked why they reacted as they did, make up some bizarre story to explain it. Very odd, our brains.

[Dendarii_Dame]

Last week I saw a headline on a magazine at the supermarket that said something like “Scientists say you can prevent Alzheimer’s–with peanut butter!” :rolleyes:

[tripthicket]

Haven’t read the article, so can’t debate its points one way or the other. Also, what I came in to say isn’t meant in any way to invalidate this test’s usefulness.

My father was highly allergic to anything - anything - that had even a trace of peanuts in it. Just smelling from the jar would likely have caused his sinuses and possibly his throat to swell closed.

My point? This test could likely be used on 99.999% of the population, but not everyone.

[deltasigma]

That’s a good point as I’m sure a lot of people have serious nut allergies, but if the test does indeed work as seems to be the case and the issue is just finding other true odorants, I’m sure they won’t be limited to peanut butter. My guess is that it was chosen only because it met the criterion and was readily available.

[Zebra]

@Canadjun

What about people (like me) that just have a very crappy sense of smell?

Your crappy sense of smell is probably equally crappy on both sides.

[TBG]

Gonna have big problems with this test in few decades when all the precious poopsies who got peanut butter banned from their schools start hitting alzheimers age.

[Nava]

@Hari_Seldon

…have been tested by allowing them to see only with the right half of each eye that goes to the right brain (is that correct? If not reverse right and left)…

It’s crossed over: right goes to left and left to right.