Huberman Lab
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Original episode
PodcastHuberman Lab
Publisher/creatorScicomm Media
Published
Shortcast updated
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About this episode
In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Noam Sobel, PhD, a Professor of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science and an expert on the human sense of smell. We discuss how the brain processes odors and how smell shapes our lives more than we realize, influencing everything from who we become friends with to how we experience emotions, hormones and aggression. Dr. Sobel also shares his lab’s groundbreaking work on digitizing smell and future technologies that could enable noninvasive disease detection through body odors.
Read the full episode show notes at hubermanlab.com.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) Noam Sobel
(00:00:20) Biology of Smell (Olfaction)
(00:04:32) Human Smell, Social Interaction, Handshaking
(00:08:31) Sponsor: LMNT
(00:10:03) Friendship, Body Odor
(00:14:04) Human Chemosignals, Smell of Fear & Contagion
(00:15:48) Aggression, Chemosignals, Men vs Women, Babies
(00:20:38) Sponsor: AG1
(00:21:51) Tears, “Chemical Blanket”, Testosterone
(00:25:37) Digitizing Smells
(00:28:25) Sponsor: Eight Sleep
(00:29:48) Creating Digital Odors; Future Medical Diagnostics
(00:33:43) Acknowledgments
Disclaimer & Disclosures
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Episode summary
This AI-generated Shortcast summary may omit nuance. Use the original episode when context or exact wording matters.
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials. I’m Andrew Huberman, Stanford professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology. Today, Dr. Noam Sobel and I discuss smell, chemosensation, and odors’ effects. Start with basics.
Primary smelling is orthonasal: we sniff. Molecules travel six or seven centimeters to the olfactory epithelium, with about 350 receptor types. Signals pass through the olfactory bulb’s pattern map to cortex, amygdala, and brain.
We underestimate human smell because we don’t visibly sniff strangers like dogs. After handshakes, people bring hands to faces and sniff them. Friends who clicked had similar body odors; among strangers, similarity predicted who seemed nicer and friendship-worthy.
People call these pheromones. What can we say about fear and other human chemical signals?
We say chemosignals. Fear odors are distinguishable from neutral samples and raise autonomic arousal. In a limited sense, fear spreads by smell.
Hexadecanal reduced aggression in men but increased it in women. Abundant in baby heads, it may quiet paternal aggression while increasing maternal defense—babies are doing chemical warfare.
Emotional tears are odorless, yet men sniffing women’s tears showed a rapid free-testosterone drop and reduced arousal-related brain activity. Tears may be a chemical blanket against aggression.
We can predict similarly smelling mixtures and transmitted violet odor, but this is black-and-white-TV territory. High-resolution digitization could someday support metabolic-odor diagnostics.
Thank you for this tour. Your delight is obvious; I’m grateful for the work and your time.
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