What is anosmia?
Answer
A partial or complete loss of the sense of smell and most of your ability to taste. This condition is caused by things as diverse as head trauma, respiratory infections, and aging. How we experience our six major special senses boils down to one thing: sensory cells translating chemical, electromagnetic, and mechanical stimuli into action potentials that our nervous system can make sense of. This process is called transduction, and each sense works in its own way.
Our sense of vision functions through photoreceptors that detect light waves. Our senses of touch, hearing, and balance use mechanoreceptors that detect sound waves and pressure on the skin and inner ear. Our sense of taste or gustation and smell or olfaction are chemical senses. They call on chemoreceptors in our taste buds and nasal passages to detect molecules in our food and the air around us.
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