So now I’m curious how this fading perception of smell happens. Eventually I’ll post about the olfactory (smell/aroma) system in detail but broadly, we’ve got a system that allows you to perceive very low concentrations of odors new to the environment that is simultaneously detecting but giving less weight to your perception of odors you’ve detected for the past few minutes. From an engineering standpoint it’s a pretty cool system, and some interesting differences from vision – with vision if you’ve been effectively ignoring objects in your visual field you can actively shift your attention to them. With olfaction, to smell something that’s faded, you have to get away from it and then return.

Thinking about all this makes me want to be a food performance artist / molecular gastronomist. I lack a certain required artistic flair though.

Have you noticed that eating food you have slaved over a stove to make can sometimes end up tasting bland? If I’ve have had a nose in a pot or pan for too long i can’t smell the food in a new and exciting way when I’m eating it.

Not sure how this compares to vision, where the brain has little tricks to prevent things from disappearing and improvisations for objects in the periphery.