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Why women have a better sense of smell
Your partner might be telling the truth when he says he didn’t notice his pungent socks. Turns out, women just have a better sense of smell.
According to research published online in PLOS ONE, women have a finer sense of smell than men thanks to more neurons in the olfactory bulb – the part of the brain dedicated to scent.
Led by a team from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, researchers developed a way of measuring the number of cells in any given brain region. They examined post-mortem brains from seven men and 11 women who were 55 at the time of their death. None had worked in a job that required a superior sense of smell, such as cooking.
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What the group discovered was that women have nearly 43 per cent more neurons in the olfactory bulb (which receives signals about odour via the nostrils) than men.
It’s not the first time scientists have noticed a difference between men and women’s perceptions of smells. Previous studies have found that women outperform men in various smell tests; with some theories concluding the difference is due to cognitive and emotional influences.
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According to study authors, their findings are not enough to prove that women actually have a superior sense of smell, but it does suggest a difference.
“Generally speaking, larger brains with larger numbers of neurons correlate with the functional complexity provided by these brains,” said lead study author Roberto Lent. “It makes sense to think that more neurons in the female olfactory bulbs would provide women with higher olfactory sensitivity.”
