We don't just smell using our nose. A team of scientists has just verified that the heart, blood, lungs and other cells of the human body have receptors to perceive smells identical to those that exist in the nose . Or put another way, that the ability to smell is not exclusive to our napia.
In their experiments, the researchers showed that if blood cells are isolated from human blood, they are attracted to and move towards the odorous molecules that produce certain aromas.
But does that mean that the heart can smell a hot cup of coffee, or the aroma of the orange that we just ate once it reaches the stomach and its molecules reach the blood? Scientists are still unclear on the answer to this question. "Once the components of the odor enter the body, we do not know if they work in the same way as they do in the nose or in experiments in the laboratory", clarifies Peter Schieberle, of the Technical University of Munich (Germany), who has presented his findings in New Orleans at the 245th Meeting of the American Chemical Society.
