Dr. Noam Sobel: How Smells Influence Our Hormones, Health & Behavior

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2023

⏱️ 193 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, my guest is Noam Sobel, PhD, professor of neurobiology in the department of brain sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Dr. Sobel explains his lab’s research on the biological mechanisms of smell (“olfaction”) and how sensing odorants and chemicals in our environment impacts human behavior, cognition, social connections, and hormones. He explains how smell is a crucial component of “social sensing” and how we use olfaction when meeting new people to determine things about their physiology and psychology, and he explains how this impacts friendships and romantic partners. He explains how smell influences emotions, hormone levels, memories and the relationship between breathing and autonomic homeostasis. He describes how smell-based screening tests can aid disease diagnosis and explains his lab’s work on digitization of smell — which may soon allow online communication to include “sending of odors” via the internet. Dr. Sobel’s work illustrates how sensitive human olfaction is and how it drives much of our biology and behavior. For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman ROKA: https://roka.com/huberman Thesis: https://takethesis.com/huberman Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr. Noam Sobel (00:03:46) Sponsors: ROKA, Thesis, Helix Sleep (00:06:46) Olfaction Circuits (Smell) (00:14:49) Loss & Regeneration of Smell, Illness (00:21:39) Brain Processing of Smell (00:24:40) Smell & Memories (00:27:52) Sponsor: AG1 (Athletic Greens) (00:29:07) Humans & Odor Tracking (00:39:25) The Alternating Nasal Cycle & Autonomic Nervous System (00:48:18) Cognitive Processing & Breathing (00:54:47) Neurodegenerative Diseases & Olfaction (01:00:12) Congenital Anosmia (01:05:01) Sponsor: InsideTracker (01:06:19) Handshaking, Sharing Chemicals & Social Sensing (01:15:07) Smelling Ourselves & Smelling Others (01:22:02) Odors & Romantic Attraction (01:24:58) Vomeronasal Organ, “Bruce Effect” & Miscarriage (01:40:20) Social Chemo-Signals, Fear (01:50:26) Chemo-Signaling, Aggression & Offspring (02:03:57) Menstrual Cycle Synchronization (02:12:11) Sweat, Tears, Emotions & Testosterone (02:27:46) Science Politics (02:37:54) Food Odors & Nutritional Value (02:45:34) Human Perception & Odorant Similarity (02:52:12) Digitizing Smell, COVID-19 & Smell (03:05:50) Medical Diagnostic Future & Olfaction Digitization (03:10:55) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:08.6	I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
0:12.1	Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today my guest is Dr. Noam Sobel.
0:17.4	Dr. Noam Sobel is a professor of neurobiology in the Department of Brain Sciences at the Weisman Institute of Science.
0:23.5	His laboratory studies olfaction and chemosensation.
0:27.1	Olfaction is of course our sense of smell.
0:29.7	Chemosensation is our ability to respond to chemicals in our environment.
0:33.7	Today, you are going to learn some absolutely incredible facts about how you interact with the world and other people around you.
0:39.8	For instance, you will learn that humans can smell things around them as well as dogs can.
0:46.4	In fact, humans are incredibly good at sensing the chemical world around them.
0:51.1	You also learn for instance that every time you meet somebody, you are taking chemicals from that person,
0:56.7	either from the chemical cloud that surrounds them or directly from the surface of their body,
1:02.4	and you are actually applying it to your own body and you are processing information about that person's chemicals to determine many things about them,
1:10.1	including how stressed they are, their hormone levels, things that operate at a subconscious level on your brain and nervous system,
1:16.7	and that impact your emotions, your decision making, and who you choose to relate to or not to relate to.
1:23.6	You will also learn that tears, yes, the tears of others are impacting your hormone levels in powerful ways.
1:31.1	You will also learn that every so often, actually on a regular schedule,
1:36.3	there is an alternation of ease through which you can breathe through one nostril or the other,
1:41.7	and that alternation reflects an underlying dynamic of your nervous system and has a lot to do with how alert or sleepy you happen to be.
1:51.8	The list of things that Dr. Nome Sobel's laboratory has discovered that relate to everyday life and that are going to make you say,
1:58.1	wow, I can't believe that happens, but then go out into the real world and actually observe that that happens,
2:02.9	in ways that are incredibly interesting, just goes on and on.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scicomm Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scicomm Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.