This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Intentional cattiness — When cats are forced to endure a crush of mass attention from an adoring public, do they continue to behave in their famous, endearing, imperious “cat-like” ways? Simona Cannas and her colleagues at the […]
“To smell again, perchance to learn better” would be a poetical way to speak of this study about teaching sleeping children in Germany how to read and write better English: “How Odor Cues Help to Optimize Learning During Sleep in a Real Life-Setting,” Franziska Neumann, Vitus Oberhauser, and Jürgen Kornmeier, Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. […]
Although few organized sports focus on the smell of peppermint, a study published almost two decades ago zeroed in on the practice. The study is: “Enhancing Athletic Performance Through the Administration of Peppermint Odor,” Bryan Raudenbush, Nathan Corley, and William Eppich, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, vol.23, 2001, pp. 156-60. The authors, at Wheeling […]
This study tells of a new (and perhaps the first) advance in the effort to explore the relationship between rats and laughter and odor: “Odour Conditioning of Positive Affective States: Rats Can Learn to Associate an Odour with Being Tickled,” Vincent Bombail, Nathalie Jerôme, Ho Lam, Sacha Muszlak, Simone L. Meddle, Alistair B. Lawrence, and […]
