Olfaction is everywhere! From foraging to speciation processes in insects and vertebrates, from pollination to crop-protection strategies in agriculture, cooking, seducing, and even in medicine, as the covid-19 crisis brutally reminded us. Over recent years our understanding of olfaction has greatly increased but at the same time, it has underlined our ignorance of many processes in this sensory system. We are starting to elucidate how our sense of smell is -involved in/modulated by- nutritional balance, sickness, aging, or personal experiences. However, paradoxically, we are still struggling to understand the perception of odors in the real world, smells which are usually composed of many different chemical compounds that may or may not be odorous individually. Might it be possible to find the elementary units of olfaction, the equivalent of wavelengths in vision, or frequencies in audition? Finally, we still are far from understanding what makes a chemical smell in a particular way and how this relates to molecules and mixtures.
Organic chemistry, biology, and even machine learning methods have so far individually and together failed to discover the primary unit(s) in olfaction. This Research Topic aims to regroup and report integrative and multidisciplinary researches that investigate how odor perception can be modulated, influenced, modified, or even hacked, through biological or environmental process in nature, and how this may affect the expected behavioral responses to odors, and eventually lead us closer to the keys of the olfactory code.
We welcome studies from topics such as (but not limited to) Chemistry, Physiology, Nutrition, Cognition, Ethology, Molecular Biology, Chemical Ecology, Medicinal Chemistry, Sensory Neuroscience, from insect to human models. We especially strongly encourage contributions from researchers working on non-conventional models (larvae, birds, etc.).
We are especially looking for integrated and/or multidisciplinary investigating responses to odorant signals and their modulation from the chemical odorant(s) itself to its detection and behavioral responses. Besides classical scientific articles, we are also welcoming articles, reviews, and opinion pieces from philosophers, historians of science, and sociologists to provide historical or contextual context and perspectives, as we believe these approaches provide new contexts and ways of thinking that can eventually lead to new discoveries.
Olfaction is everywhere! From foraging to speciation processes in insects and vertebrates, from pollination to crop-protection strategies in agriculture, cooking, seducing, and even in medicine, as the covid-19 crisis brutally reminded us. Over recent years our understanding of olfaction has greatly increased but at the same time, it has underlined our ignorance of many processes in this sensory system. We are starting to elucidate how our sense of smell is -involved in/modulated by- nutritional balance, sickness, aging, or personal experiences. However, paradoxically, we are still struggling to understand the perception of odors in the real world, smells which are usually composed of many different chemical compounds that may or may not be odorous individually. Might it be possible to find the elementary units of olfaction, the equivalent of wavelengths in vision, or frequencies in audition? Finally, we still are far from understanding what makes a chemical smell in a particular way and how this relates to molecules and mixtures.
Organic chemistry, biology, and even machine learning methods have so far individually and together failed to discover the primary unit(s) in olfaction. This Research Topic aims to regroup and report integrative and multidisciplinary researches that investigate how odor perception can be modulated, influenced, modified, or even hacked, through biological or environmental process in nature, and how this may affect the expected behavioral responses to odors, and eventually lead us closer to the keys of the olfactory code.
We welcome studies from topics such as (but not limited to) Chemistry, Physiology, Nutrition, Cognition, Ethology, Molecular Biology, Chemical Ecology, Medicinal Chemistry, Sensory Neuroscience, from insect to human models. We especially strongly encourage contributions from researchers working on non-conventional models (larvae, birds, etc.).
We are especially looking for integrated and/or multidisciplinary investigating responses to odorant signals and their modulation from the chemical odorant(s) itself to its detection and behavioral responses. Besides classical scientific articles, we are also welcoming articles, reviews, and opinion pieces from philosophers, historians of science, and sociologists to provide historical or contextual context and perspectives, as we believe these approaches provide new contexts and ways of thinking that can eventually lead to new discoveries.