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Well, this is kinda interesting! It's hard to say at the moment what the significance of it is, though. This is what I love about medicine: they discover one thing, only for it to prove how little we know about the body. "Hey! We know how to stimulate growth of gray matter! But we don't know why or if it's good for anything...." But hey, it's science, and science builds upon science, so it's all good.
From the article: "Researchers from Kyoto University and the University of Tsukuba in Japan asked 28 women to wear a specific rose scent oil on their clothing for a month, with another 22 volunteers enlisted as controls who put on plain water instead. (and that's not entirely accurate: 29 women wore the scent, but one was unable to do the post-MRI)
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed boosts in the gray matter volume of the rose scent participants.
While an increase in brain volume doesn't necessarily translate into more thinking power, the findings could have implications for neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia."
There was no change in the areas of the brain where smell or emotions were processed, which is interesting. But "significantly more gray matter in the posterior cingulate cortex or PCC (linked to memory and association)."
They don't know why this change is happening. One thought put forth is that the rose scent is acting as an irritant, which is interesting. I'm hoping they do longer term studies to see if it actually affects dementia-related illnesses! Of course, I'd also like to see this study replicated using men. It's the same problem of most medical studies using only men because they don't want to have to bother with accommodating women's hormonal variances, it's just so yucky and unpredictable! Then they proclaim that everything applies equally to all women, and they just don't.
The scent-wearing group were 29 participants aged 41–69 years, the control group 22 participants aged 41–65 years.
https://www.sciencealert.com/smelling-this-one-specific-scent-can-boost-the-brains-gray-matter
The full paper is currently available at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361923024000297?via%3Dihub
If it becomes restricted, I downloaded the PDF and would be happy to supply it.
From the article: "Researchers from Kyoto University and the University of Tsukuba in Japan asked 28 women to wear a specific rose scent oil on their clothing for a month, with another 22 volunteers enlisted as controls who put on plain water instead. (and that's not entirely accurate: 29 women wore the scent, but one was unable to do the post-MRI)
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed boosts in the gray matter volume of the rose scent participants.
While an increase in brain volume doesn't necessarily translate into more thinking power, the findings could have implications for neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia."
There was no change in the areas of the brain where smell or emotions were processed, which is interesting. But "significantly more gray matter in the posterior cingulate cortex or PCC (linked to memory and association)."
They don't know why this change is happening. One thought put forth is that the rose scent is acting as an irritant, which is interesting. I'm hoping they do longer term studies to see if it actually affects dementia-related illnesses! Of course, I'd also like to see this study replicated using men. It's the same problem of most medical studies using only men because they don't want to have to bother with accommodating women's hormonal variances, it's just so yucky and unpredictable! Then they proclaim that everything applies equally to all women, and they just don't.
The scent-wearing group were 29 participants aged 41–69 years, the control group 22 participants aged 41–65 years.
https://www.sciencealert.com/smelling-this-one-specific-scent-can-boost-the-brains-gray-matter
The full paper is currently available at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361923024000297?via%3Dihub
If it becomes restricted, I downloaded the PDF and would be happy to supply it.
