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I just love that phrase "brain wasting disease". Really gets me excited about the future... Dr. Erwin Montgomery, the local director of our APDA, and a neurologist at Arizona Health Sciences Center here in Tucson devised an "early PD diagnostic" test that involved smell. It has been accepted and recognized as the only early diagnostic tool that I have heard of. I participated in the study, which tested for depression via an interview type of test, a motor function test involving response time to a series of lights, and the now famous SMELL TEST - or lack thereof. I thought the smell test would be fun, looked forward to it in fact. But after one of the most frustrating hours of my life trying to tell the difference between peanut butter, rose, gasoline, chewing gum, etc. I threw in the towel. Years ago in my early PD studies I noticed in a bio text of some sort that there is an olfactory center very close to the substantia nigra. I think we have more than one olfactory center, but heck, I can still smell body odor, gas (you know what I mean), and other similarly enchanting sniff experiences. Yes, I live in SMELL HELL. No good, all bad. The one shining light in this tunnel of foul odors (mixed metaphors?) is the GARDENIA. THANK GOD FOR GARDENIAS! Anyway, I assumed from the proximity of this olfactory center to the substantia nigra, that the above referenced brain wasting process had laid claim to that poor olfactory center. Drat. Kathie Tollifson [log in to unmask]