This olfactometer was created by the Berkeley Olfactory Research Project (BORP), studying olfactory processing with fMRI and specialized gear. They've also created remixes of sounds from experiments using the equipment. Check out songs like Olfactory Groove and Slow Smell.
When they're not grooving in the lab (or while they are?) they accomplish important work. This paper was especially interesting:
Brain mechanisms for extracting spatial information from smell, Porter et al., Neuron 2005 47(4):581-92Abstract: Forty years ago, von Bekesy demonstrated that the spatial source of an odorant is determined by comparing input across nostrils, but it is unknown how this comparison is effected in the brain. To address this, we delivered odorants to the left or right of the nose, and contrasted olfactory left versus right localization with olfactory identification during brain imaging. We found nostril-specific responses in primary olfactory cortex that were predictive of the accuracy of left versus right localization, thus providing a neural substrate for the behavior described by von Bekesy. Additionally, left versus right localization preferentially engaged a portion of the superior temporal gyrus previously implicated in visual and auditory localization, suggesting that localization information extracted from smell was then processed in a convergent brain system for spatial representation of multisensory inputs.
Full article (sub req'd)
