Dr Norman Swan

speaker

26,995 appearances 288 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2006 last heard 15 Sep

Dr Norman Swan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.

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What's That Rash? · What has your nose got to do with sleep? · 18 Aug 2026 podcast

So this is not a nutty idea here at all.

And it's interesting that you say teaching yourself.

because there's increasing evidence before we get to this whole idea of

getting yourself back to sleep by inducing quite acute smells.

There's increasing evidence that brain training, cognitive training to try and prevent dementia or keep maintain your cognitive function is enhanced with olfactory training, smell training.

What?

Yep.

Small study, an Australian study, where you do traditional cognitive therapy, maybe cognitive training I should say, which involves processing speed, memory training or something like that.

Then you at the same time do smell training, which is actually smelling med

Well, it is like lifting weights.

So you get specific odors and you sniff them, and you sniff them on a repeated basis.

You know, there are sticks which do this, and you can actually repeatedly train your brain to remember certain odors and be able to pair them.

And it seems to enhance general cognitive training.

It does your head in, but it's thought to be part of this notion that your sense of smell goes directly.

Directly into the brain itself without other parts of the brain being involved.

So normally when we experience something in our environment, it goes through our conscious brain, the cortex, then into the thalamus, which is deeper into the brain, and then into other parts of the brain, in terms of the hippocampus and memory, amygdala and emotion.

Whereas odors seem to go straight from your nose up to the amygdala, bypassing all that.

And is thought to stimulate

The brain and create a situation.

This is the theory where it allows cognitive training to occur.

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