Michael Leon
Neurobiologist, Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology and Behavior at UC Irvine, and creator of Memory Air, an overnight scent-based memory device named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025.
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Sep 17, 2026
Michael LeonGUEST
So when you ask people what's their least important sense, they almost invariably say it's their sense of smell.
Michael LeonGUEST
If you want to discriminate between fine wines, you can use your sense of smell.
Michael LeonGUEST
But it turns out that the human brain evolved at a time when there was a lot of smells around.
Michael LeonGUEST
But now we live in a world where we've cleaned ourselves up, we've cleaned our world up, and we basically have been walking around with a brain that's been deprived of this sense.
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