ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twentieth century, one of electrophysiology’s pioneers, Lord Adrian, had an ambition: ‘the electrophysiologist,’ he wrote, ‘looking at a series of these records, could identify the particular smell that caused each one’ (Adrian, 1953). This vaulting ambition, based on electrical recording from the OB of rabbits, frogs and hedgehogs, has not been realized. There is currently no olfactory signature to be found in the electrical potentials produced by the brain but there are certainly changes in the brain’s script that are produced by odour.
