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The third message is that we humans can make our lives richer and better when we turn our attention to the sense of smell and its capabilities. The sense of smell is not immutable, but can be improved and refined using insights from psychology and brain research. It's a perspective that offers some hope to those whose sense of smell is naturally weak, or who have suffered a loss of smell after a viral infection. What can they do to start recognizing the differences between grape varieties in wine, experience the smell of fresh rain during a walk in the forest or connect with the smell of a newborn baby?

This is the subject of the third part of the book. There I describe the ability of the sense of smell to recover and improve, and how my research group is working to find new methods to train the brain using smells. In other words, nasal gymnastics. The olfactory training program that I developed to prevent memory impairment has had a completely different application since 2020. When the coronavirus hit the world, the sense of smell suddenly came into focus. Suddenly, more and more people contacted me, telling me how their sense of smell and taste had changed. Some described it as all food tasting like cardboard. Some suffered intense distaste when their boyfriend suddenly started to smell rotten. One became depressed because he could no longer smell his children. So many people who in a short time were affected by an unknown, and invisible, disability. They asked if I could help them in their rehabilitation.

At first I thought no. I'm not a physician and I don't prescribe medication. According to the conventional wisdom about the ailments of our bodies, the only cure for loss of smell must be a pill, a spray or a surgical procedure. But medical technology does not yet have much to offer those suffering from changes in their sense of smell. I noticed that the emails I received had a common theme: the sufferers had not received any help from medical professionals. They needed something that the health care system could not give them. They lacked words for their experiences, they lacked recognition from friends and they missed the memories and emotions associated with smells that could no longer be brought to life. I realized that my experience and knowledge could be useful to them, and also to anyone who knows someone suffering from this loss. The emails from sufferers gave me the impetus to write this book. One of the main discoveries from my twenty years of experience as a smell researcher is that smelling is an ability that can be developed, improved and refined. Experiences are something we can talk about and share with others—if we find the right words. Therefore, there are also unexpected opportunities to cultivate the sense of smell—a journey that starts on the next page.

Part I

THE FORGOTTEN SENSE

Chapter 1

THE SUPERPOWERS OF THE SENSE OF SMELL

If you had to sacrifice one of your senses, which one would you choose? Think about it for a moment. Consider your senses and what experiences you would lose without them. Think about the sound of your favorite music or your child's clucking laughter. Sunrises over rooftops, pine forests or the horizon. The wind from the sea in your hair. The smell of freshly brewed coffee or your lover's skin. No, this is not a choice made lightly.

When 250 British adults were asked which sense is the most important, only two, less than 1 percent, chose the sense of smell. Fewer than any other sense. In 2012, when a consulting firm asked seven thousand young adults what they would prefer to keep if they could choose from a list that included their sense of smell, passport, makeup and cell phone, half were willing to sacrifice their sense of smell to keep their cell phone. In another survey, Americans were asked what was more important: their sense of smell or their pinky toe? The result was a tie—participants thought the little toe was just as valuable as the sense of smell. This was the case—at least until the coronavirus pandemic broke out in earnest in 2020. Since then, around 300 million people have suffered from an impaired or distorted sense of smell after contracting the coronavirus. Most people now know someone who has been affected. Has this made us care about the sense of smell? Yes; a research study conducted in the US in 2021 by Rachel Herz and colleagues showed that the sense of smell may now be making a comeback. Only 15 percent of respondents chose to sacrifice their sense of smell for their pinky toe, and only 19 percent chose to sacrifice their sense of smell for their phone. Admittedly, sight and hearing were still considered far more important than smell. But perhaps we are finally rediscovering the importance of the devalued sense of smell. How did it end up at the bottom of our list of important sensory experiences? To understand this, we need to travel to nineteenth-century Paris.