Anosmia and Compensating Senses

Ever since Dr. Rachel Herz's lecture on Thursday, I've been telling anyone who will listen about some of the things that she said. For those who seem more interested than others, I've told them (and suggested that they try) the jellybean test that Dr. Herz had us do. I did the test with two of my friends when we were out for lunch at our favorite restaurant, and the response was almost sad. It was hard to imagine being unable to taste because of an inability to smell, especially in terms of really enjoying food (as is true of the place where we were). This experiment prompted a discussion of anosmia, and how permanent and truly debilitating that it can be. (side note: this was another thing that I hadn't really considered before the lecture, even when we were reading Diane Ackerman's book. Smell is constant and so necessary that without it, people can experience such an enormous disconnect. ANYWAY-)

When I first brought up anosmia, my boyfriend's response was "Oh, my uncle doesn't have a sense of smell. He was born without it." This blew my mind. I know his uncle fairly well and have been around him on many occasions involving food. I could only imagine that if I was anosmic, I would let everyone know it, and I would probably avoid all gatherings that centered around food and eating. However, this was the first time I was hearing of Uncle Sam's anosmia. Of course I asked a lot of questions- does Sam use a lot of condiments or salt on his food? ("I'm not sure, it's not something I've noticed), does he have any real preferences for foods? ("They change sometimes- one day he likes pizza and the next he doesn't. Maybe that happens with different brands or the same food that comes from different places?"), can he tell when food has gone bad? ("No. And that is really dangerous").

I was in disbelief that I have actually known someone with anosmia for years and was hearing about it for the first time. I could not imagine losing my ability to smell; I could only assume that I would feel very disconnected, especially in situations involving a special meal (like holidays). Perhaps because Sam has never had a sense of smell, he doesn't feel a need to lament over what he's missing because he can't really be sure of what exactly that is.

At this point, I was still in shock that I knew one person with anosmia, but then the conversation progressed and I learned that I knew another! Jim, a friend of my boyfriend, suffered from severe nosebleeds as a child and as a result, had some sort of corrective cauterizing operation to fix them. Because of this, his smell receptors were (I'm assuming) burned off and the connection between his nose and his brain was effectively severed. Here was another person that I had known for years and had never heard about his lack of olfaction. Is this just something that no one talks about? Dr. Herz's lecture made it pretty clear that people without a sense of smell know that something is missing, and yet these two men were not vocal about it. I would have guessed that I would have known about Jim's anosmia because he wasn't born with it; he has, at one point in his life, experienced smell. Apparently he remembers it and is aware that things are different now, but his lack of smell is not a common topic of conversation.

An interesting connection between Sam and Jim is that they both have perfect pitch. Sam attended Berklee College of Music; making music has been a huge part of his life and it continues to be. Jim was, at one point, a music major in college, and although he chose a different path for his education, he is the music director of his a cappella group and hears things in songs to put into arrangements that very few people would even notice. Is their lack of smell to blame? Sometimes, when one sense is gone, the other senses grow stronger to compensate. Could it truly be just a coincidence that both of these men have better than average hearing but do not have the ability to smell? Although perfect pitch may be genetic, neither Sam nor Jim come from an extensively musically talented family. Sam arguably has more of a genetic component, with his mother being a talented singer, but he far exceeded her ability (not to mention neither of his sisters can carry a tune in a bucket). Maybe this is a prime example of the interaction of nature and nurture, which was then fueled by a missing sense. If Sam had a predisposition for musical talent and grew up in a house where that was fostered, he was set up to succeed. However, his anosmia cannot be ruled out as a mediating factor in this, especially when we see a similar phenomenon with Jim. Their inability to smell could surely have lent to their above average pitch detection. Maybe that's why I've never heard either of them mention their anosmia- they don't consider it something that they're missing because they have more of something else to focus on.