Symposium Overview.

The article reports on epidemiological studies on how the olfactory system gives rise to the perception of a smell, which were discussed at the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste in San Francisco, California, in July 2008. The Symposium sought to understand the underlying mechanisms of neural processing. The author says that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of physics applies to studies of olfaction and understanding of how the measurement affects the system.