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Of all our senses, the sense of smell is one of our oldest and most interesting. It's stayed with us throughout evolution and is a sense we share with most animals, including wolves and dogs. During this session, you will hear more about how the sense of smell works in humans, how we keep track of smells, and how understanding behavior helps us understand evolution beyond the fossil record.
During the event there will be a pub quiz and goodies to be won! This event will be held in the basement. This is a free and open event with limited capacity, so please arrive early to claim a seat.
During the event there will be a pub quiz and goodies to be won! This event will be held in the basement. This is a free and open event with limited capacity, so please arrive early to claim a seat.
The sense you would give up first—but maybe miss the most
Lucile Rey
(Postdoctoral Researcher in Psychology at Karolinska Institutet)
Do you think that smell doesn’t matter in your daily life? Do you believe that other mammals are far better than us at perceiving odors? These misconceptions are so ingrained that we often accept them as truths, even though the scientific community disagrees. My PhD research has changed the way I think about odors. Paying attention to odors and recognizing their importance can unlock a whole new world full of emotions, memories, and discoveries. I will here try to open your nose to this whole new world.
How did some wolves turn into dogs?
Christina Hansen Wheat
(Assistant Professor at Linköping University)
Dogs were domesticated from now extinct wolf populations 40,000-15,000 years ago, making them the only large carnivore and the first species to ever be domesticated. But how did dog domestication happen? Selection on behavioural traits, such as decreased fearfulness, likely started the domestication process. However, because behaviours leave no archeological record, we know little about which other behaviours might have been important during early dog domestication. One way to address this knowledge gap is to compare the behaviour of wolves and dogs, identifying similarities and thereby behaviours that have been conserved through evolutionary time. Using this approach on wolves and dogs hand-raised under identical conditions, I have uncovered some surprising clues to which behaviours might have been part of the selection process leading to the dogs that sleep on our couches today. Which “typical dog behaviours” do you think might be original wolf behaviours? Come to this talk and let us find out if you are right.
Remembering Scents
Shirley Lim
(Postdoctoral Researcher of Cognitive Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet)
Can you remember a scent you caught seconds ago – beyond ‘it’s nice’ or ‘its gross’ or simply naming it? Our sense of smell is unique, we can instantly know we like or hate a scent, but struggle to pin down exactly what it is. Scents are tied to names (semantics) and feelings (hedonics), yet when you strip away those labels, a smell becomes remarkably abstract and slippery. In this talk, we’ll explore whether our noses have a temporary storage system (working memory), and how that differ from how we remember sights or sounds, and why smells can trigger both powerful nostalgia and complete blanks.
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