Digitized Fragrances Coming to a Computer Near You?

By admin | December 3, 2008

Submitted by Beauty Brains Blog

How would you like to download your favorite fragrance as easily as getting a song off iTunes? Well, if things develop as these researchers think it might, you could be doing just that.

According to scientists at the Weizmann Institute, they’ve been able to create an odor map showing relative similarities between smells. They did this by listing chemical characteristics of 250 known odorants and identifying the most important in terms of smell. They looked at brain scans of animals exposed to these smells and found similar odors produced similar scans. They were then able to predict brain scan patterns based on chemical characteristics of unknown odors.

When this map gets more detailed, scientists will be able to analyze a fragrance, generate a digital “map” and communicate it through the Internet. It would then be a simple matter to reconstruct the odor pattern from known chemicals.

iSmell is born

Well, maybe they should use a different name.

-Mid Brain

Would you like to be able to download odors through your computer? What fragrance would you want most? Leave a comment and let the rest of the Beauty Brains community know.

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