In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explore how your sense of smell (olfaction), taste, and chemical sensing influence memory, alertness, focus, and even communication between people. I explain how these senses help us detect chemicals in the environment and respond to a variety of environmental cues. I discuss the connection between the olfactory system and cognitive performance, and I provide practical tools to enhance learning, sensory function, and brain health. Additionally, I examine how chemical signals exchanged between people subtly influence emotions, biology, and social bonds. Huberman Lab Essentials episodes are approximately 30 minutes long and focus on key science and protocol takeaways from past Huberman Lab episodes. Essentials are released every Thursday, while full-length episodes continue to air every Monday. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Huberman Lab Essentials are short episodes focused on essential science and protocol takeaways from past full-length Huberman Lab episodes. Watch or listen to the full-length episode at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Our Place: https://fromourplace.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Huberman Lab Essentials; Smell & Taste 00:02:04 Tears, Biological Response & Communication 00:05:16 Sponsor: AG1 00:07:16 Smell, Innate vs Learned Response, Memory 00:10:31 Accessory Olfactory Pathway, Pheromones, Vandenbergh effect 00:12:42 Smell & Alertness, Smelling Salts, Tool: Nasal Breathing & Learning 00:16:06 Tool: Increase Sense of Smell 00:16:51 Sponsor: LMNT 00:18:07 Smell, Brain Health, Olfactory Neurons, Tool: Improve Smell 00:20:11 Traumatic Brain Injury & Olfactory Dysfunction 00:22:25 Smell, Alertness, Smelling Salts, Tool: Peppermint 00:24:32 Taste Modalities & Functions; Taste & Digestive System 00:30:47 Sponsor: Our Place 00:32:39 Pheromones, Coolidge Effect, Humans & Chemical Communication 00:38:44 Recap & Key Takeaways Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Today, we're going to talk about chemical sensing. We're going to talk about the sense of smell, our ability to detect odors in our environment. We're also going to talk about taste, our ability to detect chemicals and make sense of chemicals that are put in our mouth. and into our digestive tract.
And we are going to talk about chemicals that are made by other human beings that powerfully modulate the way that we feel, our hormones and our health. Now that last category are sometimes called pheromones. However, whether or not pheromones exist in humans is rather controversial. There actually hasn't been a clear example of a true human pheromonal effect.
But what is absolutely clear, what is undeniable is that there are chemicals that human beings make and release in things like tears onto our skin and sweat and even breath that powerfully modulate or control the biology of other individuals. There are things floating around in the environment, which we call volatile chemicals.
So when you actually smell something, like let's say you smell a wonderfully smelling rose or cake, yes, you are inhaling the particles into your nose. There are literally little particles of those chemicals are going up into your nose and being detected by your brain. Other ways of getting chemicals into our system is by putting them in our mouth.
by literally taking foods and chewing them or sucking on them and breaking them down into their component parts. And that's one way that we sense chemicals with anything, our tongue. So these chemicals, we sometimes bring into our body, into our biology, through deliberate action. We select a food, we chew that food, and we do it intentionally.
Sometimes they're coming into our body through non-deliberate action. We enter an environment and there's smoke and we smell the smoke, and as a consequence, we take action. Sometimes, however, other people are actively making chemicals with their body. Typically, this would be with their breath, with their tears, or possibly, I want to underscore possibly,
by making what are called pheromones, molecules that they release into the environment, typically through the breath, that enter our system through our nose or our eyes or our mouth, that fundamentally change our biology.
I'll just give an example, which is a very salient and interesting one that was published about 10 years ago in the journal Science, showing that humans, men in particular in this study, have a strong biological response and hormonal response to the tears of women. What they did is they had women, and in this case, it was only women for whatever reason, cry and they collected their tears.
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