Quand l’atmosphère sent le soufre. Perception des pollutions odorantes

摘要

In our industrial societies, we lived with sensory nuisances such as noise, visual and odorant pollutions. We review the mechanism of the sense of smell and how odorant pollution can affect us emotionally. The sense of smell is intimately connected to brain areas that control our anxiety. Then, the chemical structures of malodorous compounds are discussed. The physiology of the peripheral olfactory system is then described. The atomistic-level mechanisms responsible for our sense of smell involve our olfactory sensory neurons, located at the top of our nasal cavity. They express ~400 types of odorant receptors. These receptors and the so-called peri-receptor events can be considered as the cornerstone of olfaction.