New study strengthens olfactory vibration-sensing theory

(Phys.org)—A new study by a team of chemists in Greece has added credence to a theory that suggests that humans differentiate smells by sensing molecular vibrations, rather than through simple binding to receptors. In their paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers found that deuterating a compound with more hydrogen atoms than had been tested in previous research, resulted in test subjects being able to distinguish between two nearly identical molecules with two distinct vibration frequencies.

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