Virtual reality scientists are now developing an interface that can release different smells associated with the images that the VR headset transmits. After inconclusive attempts to present films with odours in the 1950s, currently proposed interfaces show promising signs. Up to now, the metaverse simply reproduced visible and auditory aspects, sometimes even tactile ones, but the addition of smell marks a new milestone. Smell adds a new affective dimension to the user experience. Yet this aromatic technology can be puzzling, especially when it’s only a matter of enhancing a person’s pleasure in a video game. Nevertheless, by working on the limbic system and stimulating areas of the brain connected to memory and emotions, this research doesn’t stop here. Whether related to virtual reality or to other areas, several studies are underway, particularly in the medical field of olfactotherapy. Long considered to be the most primitive of the senses, smell now occupies an important place in scientific research, confirming the vital role it plays in our individual and social lives.

Annick le Guérer, a philosopher, anthropologist and the author of Scent: The Mysterious and Essential Powers of Smell (Random House, 1992), calls smell “the sense of the future.” In contrast to the tenets of Western philosophy, the rehabilitation of this sense gives us access to new knowledge. For far too long, our understanding of the world as human animals has minimized the knowledge that smell offers in favour of the other senses. Considered an archaic sense, smell has been relegated to

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