Smell and Taste Center

The University of Pennsylvania Smell and Taste Center was founded in 1980. This unique center, which encompasses not only the Medical School’s Smell and Taste Center, but the first NIH-funded Clinical Research Center in the United States devoted to the senses of taste and smell, has achieved world-wide prominence for both its research and clinical activities.

The Center has three primary goals:

• first, to provide clinical evaluation, treatment, and counseling for patients experiencing chemosensory deficits;
• second, to provide facilities for an intellectual focus for research in basic and applied aspects of chemosensation; and
• third, to provide training for students, doctoral level scientists, and others interested in chemoreception science.

The Core Facility of the Center is strategically located in the Ravdin Institute of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. This convenient location provides close associations with numerous departments, including the Departments of Maxillary and Oral Facial Surgery, Neurosurgery, and Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery. This facility houses the administrative offices of the Center, traditional testing and stimulus preparation rooms, two human air dilution olfactometers and the Hoffman controlled environment room. The olfactometers provide highly accurate measurements of odorant stimuli used in human chemosensory studies, and allow for the electrophysiological measurement of odor evoked potentials. Other major equipment housed in the Core facility includes computerized acoustic and anterior rhinometric measurement systems, a multichannel polygraph, a unique regional automated taste testing system, a computerized gas chromatograph with both photo- and flame-ionization detectors, and over a dozen microcomputers used for on-line collection, analysis, and presentation of patient data.

Smell and Taste Center related entry . . .