Study: What Makes a Smell Bad?

A study from UF Health researchers reveals the mechanisms behind how your brain decides you dislike — even loathe — a smell.

Or as first author and graduate research fellow Sarah Sniffen puts it: How do odors come to acquire some sort of emotional charge?

In many ways, our world capitalizes upon the importance of smells to influence emotions, running the gamut from perfumes to cooking and even grocery store design.

“Odors are powerful at driving emotions, and it’s long been thought that the sense of smell is just as powerful, if not more powerful, at driving an emotional response as a picture, a song or any other sensory stimulus,” said senior author Dan Wesson, Ph.D., a professor of pharmacology and therapeutics in the UF College of Medicine and interim director of the Florida Chemical Senses Institute.

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