IS IT BOLLOCKS?

Film Buff investigates the facts behind outlandish movie plots.

Does Black Widow break the science of smell?

THIS MONTH BLACK WIDOW

Q In Black Widow, Natasha needs to sever her olfactory nerve. She does this with a quick face smash in a desk, breaking her nose and cutting off her sense of smell. Whiff of authenticity?

A DR. KATE SCOFFINGS

GP, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, MBBS MRCGP DRCOG DFSRH PGCERTMEDED

Yes, you can sever your olfactory nerve with a nose break – even having a rhinoplasty (nose job) or septoplasty can damage it. The olfactory nerve isn’t just one nerve, it’s lots of very fine nerves that emerge from the brain to the top of the nasal cavity. Because they are so fine they are easily damaged/disrupted. Smell has less ‘backup’ than other senses if things go wrong (e.g. taste has two-to-three inputs, so if one goes, there is a backup system). The most common cause of loss of sense of smell is infection followed by head trauma. A broken nose would immediately inhibit your sense of smell, although generally, people don’t tend to notice at first due to the searing pain, swelling, etc. A nose break hurts like hell, and swells plus inflammatory secretions will head there to help healing, which leads to the nose streaming. I presume Natasha is good with pain, but she probably would have had more coming down her nose than that elegant dribble of blood. Could it be popped back into place after and get Nat her smell back? Not even slightly. Once damaged, it is hit-and-miss whether smell comes back at all. Ninety per cent of people who lose their sense of smell through head injury never get it back. Seventy per cent of those who lose it through infection never get it back. Interestingly, it is the only one of the senses that goes straight to the olfactory cortex, right next to the hippocampus where memories are stored/shaped, which is why it is thought smell can be so evocative.