If someone can`t smell, it is possible, that he can`t feel the taste of foods to!
Question: I read a Darwin story about 2 brothers. One of them kill the other putting a cigar on the table and left the gas flowing in the room, and left. The other brother can`t smell, and fire up the cigar and die. If he can`t smell, how is possible that he taste the cigar?
Answers: I read a Darwin story about 2 brothers. One of them kill the other putting a cigar on the table and left the gas flowing in the room, and left. The other brother can`t smell, and fire up the cigar and die. If he can`t smell, how is possible that he taste the cigar?
They are two different senses. Although the perception of odor does affect how we perceive taste, the physiological processing is separate. Taste buds vs the system that processes smell. The brain has a way of interconnecting experiences that may have given you the idea that both are needed for the experience, but that is not the case.
It's different parts of the brain that control each of those senses. Smell helps us with taste in the sense that if something smells good, it's the evolutionary response that it is probably safe for you to eat. Just like if someone tastes something sour, the body knows that it is probably rancid and you shouldn't eat it.
Our tongue is innervated by Cranial nerves 7 and 9 while our ability to smell is controlled by the olfactory nerve. They are two different systems although there is some overlap but not because of the senses as such, the taste buds will be working properly, but just because the higher centres of the brain can perceive sensory information in different ways.
Losing one sense doesn't mean he's naturally lost a second, such as your question has asked. It's been said that when a person loses one sense, it heightens the others.
I don't have a sense of smell but can taste. I was born premature and it can be related to that. The tubes in my nose are too small so my brain can't read the signals properly. I sometimes smell things but i can't tell if its a real smell or if my brain is making it up to compensate!
Hope that helps