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

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:
https://athleticgreens.com/huberman LMNT:
https://drinklmnt.com/hubermanlab Waking Up:
https://wakingup.com/huberman Momentous:
https://livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr. Noam
Sobel (00:04:03) Sponsors: LMNT & Waking Up (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 (00:25:11) Sponsor: AG1 (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 (01:06:19) 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
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