Scientists are trying to restore people's sense of smell by creating an implant ...

Scientists are trying to restore people's sense of smell by creating an implant ...
Scientists are trying to restore people's sense of smell by creating an implant ...

Whether a person has lost their sense of smell from Covid, a traumatic brain injury or invasive surgery, scientists hope they may soon have a way to fix it.

That's because they're developing an implant — similar to one currently used to improve hearing — that zaps the brain when it detects odours and brings back a person's ability to smell.

It is only a prototype at the moment, but if successful the breakthrough could give hope to millions, as figures estimate up to five per cent of people worldwide suffer from the debilitating condition. 

Scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) are currently working on the revolutionary device, which is based on a cochlear implant used to improve hearing. 

Loss of smell, known as anosmia, occurs when the nerves in the olfactory bulb are damaged, meaning they no longer transfer smell information to the brain. 

Scientists are developing an implant — similar to one currently used to improve hearing — that zaps the brain when it detects odours and brings back a person's ability to smell (pictured)

Scientists are developing an implant — similar to one currently used to improve hearing — that zaps the brain when it detects odours and brings back a person's ability to smell (pictured)

HOW DOES THE NEW PROTOTYPE DEVICE RESTORE YOUR SMELL?

The Olfactory Implant System is a prototype brain stimulation device that is designed to restore a person's sense of smell.

It is designed to create a smell fingerprint for odours using various sensors, so a computer has a specific code for every smell.

Here is how it works: 

1. The external sensors detect odours

2. Signals from the sensor transmit to the external processor to be coded

3. The external processor sends a unique code (based on the odours) to the transmitter

4. The transmitter sends the signal wirelessly across the scalp to the internal receiver-stimulator

5. The internal receiver-stimulator sends the signal through a wire to the electrode array on the olfactory bulb

6. The olfactory bulb is stimulated with a unique pattern based on the original odour

7. The brain perceives a sense of smell 

Advertisement

For many years, neurophysiologists have been challenged by the difficulty of patients who lose their sense of taste and smell because of the complexity of the olfactory nerve system.

With the hope of offering a solution, neurophysiologist Professor Richard Costanzo and his colleagues have been working in VCU's Smell and Taste Research Laboratory to develop a prototype device that could restore damaged olfactory functions.

'Over the last two or three decades I have been finding a way to restore the sense of smell,' said Professor Costanzo.

'Five to ten years ago, I had this idea that we could bypass the olfactory nerve damage — like in a cochlear implant that stimulates parts of the brain, to restore perceptions of smell — so the people who are suffering would have some sort of way of restoring it.'

After Professor Costanzo and his colleague, cochlear implant surgeon Dr Daniel Coelho, crossed paths with a wealthy donor, it led to the formation of the company Sensory Restoration Technologies.

The donor was Scott Moore, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and anosmia in a skateboarding accident. His financial backing helped the scientists produce the Olfactory Implant System (OIS), a prototype brain stimulation device designed to restore a person's sense of smell.  

Professor Costanzo said: 'We patented an idea for how to create an array of sensors that would create a smell fingerprint — so a computer would have a specific code for every smell.

'And you would train this device with different odours to have unique fingerprints for those odours.'

He went on to explain how similar the device would be to a cochlear implant.

It is only a prototype at the moment, but if successful the breakthrough could give hope to millions, as figures estimate up to five per cent of people suffer from anosmia (stock image)

It is only a prototype at the moment, but if successful the breakthrough could give hope to millions, as figures estimate up to five per cent of people suffer from anosmia (stock image)

'No one knows where in the brain the sense of smell is for a banana or an apple and it may not even be in one place.

'But with cochlear implants, once they're inserted to get the different sounds and frequencies to produce speech, we can individually program those for each patient,' said Professor Costanzo.

'So we envisioned the same approach for the olfactory implant to embed the electrons in specific areas of the brain and after asking the patient what things smell like, we can programme it to match up to a digital footprint.' 

To figure out where in the brain the implant should be placed, the researchers piggy-backed onto a 24/7 epilepsy monitoring study, stimulating the patients with different odours while they were being observed.

read more from dailymail.....

NEXT The UK's most sustainable restaurants are revealed - and it's bad news for KFC ... trends now