A Tech Fix for Smell Loss

Who’s up for a brain implant?

A WaPo headline for a story by Eileen Abbott:

‘Bionic nose’ may help people experiencing smell loss, researchers say

Two scientists are working on a neuroprosthetic that may help millions with anosmia, such as those who lost their sense of smell because of covid

One of the scientists is Richard Costanzo, a human olfaction researcher whose work I respect and who I’ve bumped into a few times at the annual smell and taste conference.

Here’s Abbott’s nut graf:

A small external odor sensing piece will send signals to a microprocessor chip which will generate “unique digital fingerprints for different smells,” Costanzo said. The chip will then relay the information via special radio wave frequencies to a receiver inside the skull to stimulate specific brain areas that generate a particular smell sensation or perception.

How does the chip get into the patient’s head?

Surgery would be required to insert the electrode array in the brain, though it’s too early to tell whether it would be placed by a neurosurgeon or endoscopically through the nose, Costanzo said.

According to the story, Costanzo thinks a fully developed prototype is 5 to 10 years away. I’d say 10 years is wildly optimistic and 5 years is chum for the VCs.

More to the point—what do prospective patients/customers think of the concept?

Prolific blogger, retired UW con-law professor, and anosmic Ann Althouse has an opinion.

I have this problem myself and would love a cure, but there is no way I would accept an implant in my head to solve this problem.

Althouse zeroes in on the fact that an analogous product—the cochlear implant—produces sounds that are useful but a far cry from normal hearing.

Why would you want something like that to replace smelling — want it enough to have something surgically implanted within your skull? The WaPo article talks about an anosmia patient who misses nostalgic smells like Christmas tree, but I doubt that kind of subtlety is coming.

If you want to help me sense dangers like fire and smellable toxins, just invent a wearable device — a wristband — that gives off an alert that I can hear/see/feel. I don’t need some kind of fake smell-like sense intruding into my natural experience of the world.

Never mind the product development timeline—it might take Costanzo and company a few years just to come up with a winning sales pitch.