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A researcher affirms that the device will help to distinguish essential odors for life and will be “a hope” for those who have lost their olfactory capacity.
They invent a bionic nose that could help those who have lost their sense of smell
Richard Costanzo and Daniel Coelho, scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University, announced this week that they have created a bionic nose that recovers nerve connections and restores the sense of smell to the person who lost it, for example, after being infected with covid-19.
A team of scientists has developed a prototype device that is now being prepared to start clinical trials in humans. An intelligent nose in the initial stage that should allow a person to distinguish the essential odors for life. In the future, scientists will expand the capabilities of the device by increasing the spectrum of recognizable odors. When designing this nose, the greatest difficulty has been teaching the device to imitate each smell, since human beings have some 400 olfactory receptors that can recognize thousands of odors.
The appearance of the device is quite unusual, since the artificial nose has been designed in the form of glasses. A sensor on the bridge of the nose between the eyes is responsible for detecting odors and sending the appropriate signal through the atrium to a receptor located under the skin. Then, each electrical impulse is recognized by the body and converted into a perceived odor.
Restoring people’s ability to smell is the ultimate goal, Costanzo said, adding that his main mission “is to bring hope to desperate people” with anosmia who follow the progress of his work. However, citizens without a sense of smell will have to wait between 5 and 10 years to be able to buy this artificial nose.
