#152 - Meet The Biophysicist Who Accidentally Discovered Telepathy

Smell is different because, for a very simple reason, creating a stimulus, especially with computers these days, creating a stimulus for the eye is a matter of three lines of code on a computer screen.

For sound, it's three lines of code through headphones.

For smell, you can't do that.

It has to be a molecule.

Until very recently, and I think this is a game changer, nobody had ever managed to elicit a smell sensation by direct stimulation in the olfactory epithelium.

People, I mean, I know some people who spent, in fact, a colleague of mine in Israel at Weizmann, spent, I think, a couple of years trying this.

Like 40, 50 subjects? Not a thing.

That's pretty astounding.

Like we can elicit most things by stimulating the brain in particular ways, right? Happiness, sadness, different emotions, but not scent.

But even trivially, you can, with magnetic stimulation, if you put it on the back of the head, you get phosphenes in the visual field.

I mean, you know, no such thing has ever happened with smell.

Now, I say this until recently because some young people, I call them kids, actually, because they look like kids.

They may be 22 or 23, but they look about 17, at a startup in San Francisco, had the brilliant idea of putting ultrasound, you know, there's ultrasound stimulation of neurons, allegedly, Whatever.

It sort of works.

They put ultrasound diagonally from the forehead onto the olfactory bulb, which is right behind the bridge of the nose.

And to their surprise, and not even more, they got very good smell sensations for the first time.

So this...

It happened in January, and my understanding is they've had other fish to fry at the company since then, so they haven't made much progress.

But there's another kid, actually a high school kid, right now doing those experiments again, and we're in touch because I want to know what's happening.

So we may be about to witness a revolution in the olfaction field if... you can elicit reliable sensations by stimulating bits of the bulb, then our understanding of what's going on will go from very little to a great deal, in my opinion, in a couple of years.

So what's different about that technique than what's been practiced in the past where stimulation hasn't elicited ascent? What are the differences in those techniques? And then what does that teach you about the off-action system?

Well, so...

First of all, it's not 100% clear what they're stimulating.

Is it the bulb or is it the nerves coming through the laminate crevata to the bulb? What is the difference? I think they're just, it's a bit like, how do you make good coffee? More is better.

You know, you stimulate, you're probably stimulating more neurons because consider the fact that Each little region of the bulb or whatever it is, even the nerves below, that they're stimulating is actually a large amount.

Smell is different because, for a very simple reason, creating a stimulus, especially with computers these days, creating a stimulus for the eye is a matter of three lines of code on a computer screen.

For sound, it's three lines of code through headphones.

For smell, you can't do that.

It has to be a molecule.

Until very recently, and I think this is a game changer, nobody had ever managed to elicit a smell sensation by direct stimulation in the olfactory epithelium.

People, I mean, I know some people who spent, in fact, a colleague of mine in Israel at Weizmann, spent, I think, a couple of years trying this.

Like 40, 50 subjects? Not a thing.

That's pretty astounding.

Like we can elicit most things by stimulating the brain in particular ways, right? Happiness, sadness, different emotions, but not scent.

But even trivially, you can, with magnetic stimulation, if you put it on the back of the head, you get phosphenes in the visual field.

I mean, you know, no such thing has ever happened with smell.

Now, I say this until recently because some young people, I call them kids, actually, because they look like kids.

They may be 22 or 23, but they look about 17, at a startup in San Francisco, had the brilliant idea of putting ultrasound, you know, there's ultrasound stimulation of neurons, allegedly, Whatever.

It sort of works.

They put ultrasound diagonally from the forehead onto the olfactory bulb, which is right behind the bridge of the nose.

And to their surprise, and not even more, they got very good smell sensations for the first time.

So this...

It happened in January, and my understanding is they've had other fish to fry at the company since then, so they haven't made much progress.

But there's another kid, actually a high school kid, right now doing those experiments again, and we're in touch because I want to know what's happening.

So we may be about to witness a revolution in the olfaction field if... you can elicit reliable sensations by stimulating bits of the bulb, then our understanding of what's going on will go from very little to a great deal, in my opinion, in a couple of years.

So what's different about that technique than what's been practiced in the past where stimulation hasn't elicited ascent? What are the differences in those techniques? And then what does that teach you about the off-action system?

Well, so...

First of all, it's not 100% clear what they're stimulating.

Is it the bulb or is it the nerves coming through the laminate crevata to the bulb? What is the difference? I think they're just, it's a bit like, how do you make good coffee? More is better.

You know, you stimulate, you're probably stimulating more neurons because consider the fact that Each little region of the bulb or whatever it is, even the nerves below, that they're stimulating is actually a large amount.