Restoring Your Sense of Smell
Sensory Restoration Technologies
(SRT) is leading the way with real
solutions for patients living with the
loss of smell, medically known as
anosmia. Currently in development,
our revolutionary olfactory implant
system is designed to detect smell
particles and stimulate brain activity, emulating a sense of smell.
Anosmia: A Hidden Problem
Patients with anosmia experience the loss of smell. This can be triggered by traumatic brain injury, illness, or underlying conditions that impact the part of the brain responsible for receiving this sensation.
The sense of smell acts as an early warning system. On top of blocking pleasant smells, anosmia can be dangerous because it diminishes the ability to detect potential threats like smoke, gas leaks, or spoiled food.
Living with Anosmia
We've heard so many accounts from those living with the loss of smell. The challenges they face and the resilience they show is what drives us to finding a solution.
Scott Moorehead suffered a traumatic brain injury when fell in the driveway, while teaching his 6-year-old son how to skateboard. He recovered from the internal bleeding and concussion but never regained his smell. The connection between the olfactory nerves in his nose and his brain had been severed.
“Until you can’t smell at all you have no idea how emotional the experience can be,” said Moorehead, who fell into a deep depression. “You start to think about these really awful things, like, someday my daughter is going to get married and I’m going to walk her down the aisle and I’m going to give her a big hug, and I’m going to have no idea what she smelled like.”
Despite his depression, Moorehead isn’t one to give up easily. He’s a successful businessman, running the largest Verizon retailer in the nation. Through a friend, he found out about a team at Virginia Commonwealth University working on converting chemical scents into useful electrical signals and offered to not only become their test subject but also their business partner. He supplied the initial round of funding to kick-off the commercialization efforts.
Together, they’ve launched a startup called Lawnboy Ventures, which Moorehead hopes will not only bring back his own sense of smell but help millions of others in the same position.
Scott Moorehead - CEO of RoundRoom
Our Technology
Our system bridges the sense of smell to the brain. Similar to how cochlear implants restore hearing loss, we use technology to stimulate signals in the brain’s olfactory cortex to perceive a sense of smell.
How It Works
This illustration models how the smell restoration device would function. The device includes sensors to detect odor particles and processors that sends electrical currents to directly stimulate the brain’s olfactory centers and create a sensation of smell.
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The external sensors detect odors.
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Signals from the sensor transmit to the external processor to be coded.
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The external processor sends a unique code (based on the odorants) to the transmitter.
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The transmitter sends the signal wirelessly acorss the scalp to the internal receiver-stimulator.
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The internal receiver-stimulator sends the signal through a wire to the electrode array on the olfactory bulb.
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The olfactory bulb is stimulated with a unique pattern based on the original odor.
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Brain perceives a sense of smell.
What's next?
SRT continues to lead the world in development of restorative technologies for the senses. Our current work is focusing on the Olfactory Implant System (OIS), which is in the pre-clinical phase. First-in-human prototype testing is our next step.
