A brief summary of current research.
Traumatic brain injury and olfactory deficits: The tale of two smell tests!
Fortin, A, Lefebvre , MB and Ptito, M (2010). Brain Injury, Vol. 24(1), pp 27-33.
This study compared two tests used to determine difficulty with the sense of smell after brain injury. The two smell tests found that patients with frontal lesion performed significantly worse than patients with other types of lesion. A high proportion — 40-44 percent — of patients with olfactory impairments were not aware of their difficulty, and the authors recommend that clinicians systematically assess olfactory functions.
Posted on BrainLine January 14, 2010.
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Anonymous replied on Permalink
I had a bad head injury in 2001 and lost my ability to smell. Gone. Never coming back. Cranial nerve severed. I had a hard time eating for a while. Lost a lot of wait cause food tasted so bland. Had these Auras. And phantom smells. Etc. after a number of years, my taste strengthened. Foods no longer tasted like freeze dried rice cakes. And progressively I have been able to '"taste" scents. Nothing like candles or potpourri, etc... yet coffee, smoke, popcorn, piss infested bathrooms, crab boil etc ... anything that has become aerosolized I can detect through taste.