Ep 104: Leslie Kay on Smell, Memory and the Brain
Ep 104: Leslie Kay on Smell, Memory and the Brain  
Podcast: Brave New World -- hosted by Vasant Dhar
Published On: Thu Apr 09 2026
Description: Your nose knows more than you think. Professor Leslie M. Kay joins Vasant Dhar to reveal how smell is wired directly into the brain's emotional core — and how every breath you take is quietly synchronising your mind. Useful Resources: 1. Leslie Kay2. GenBank3. National Library of Medicine4. Walter Jackson Freeman III5. Dynamical Systems6. Linda B. Buck and Richard Axel7. Dmitry Rinberg, Rinberg Lab8. S. Murray Sherman9. John Hopfield10. Christof Koch11. Joy Milne12. Aromha test13. Lucia F. Jacobs14. From chemotaxis to the cognitive map: The function of olfaction - Lucia F Jacobs 15. Patricia Churchland16. Andrew Sheriff, Northwestern Human Olfaction Lab17. Long-Range Respiratory and Theta Oscillation Networks Depend on Spatial Sensory Context - Andrew Sheriff, Guinevere Pandolfi,  Vivian S Nguyen and Leslie M. Kay18. Evidence for a Chromatographic Model of Olfaction - Maxwell Mozell 19. COVID-19 and olfactory dysfunction: a looming wave of dementia? - Leslie M. Kay 20. SARS-CoV-2 is associated with changes in brain structure - UK Biobank 21. Asifa Majid22. Human Olfaction at the Intersection of Language, Culture, and Biology - Asifa Majid Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines