Professor Lucia Jacobs has found that people can create a map in their heads with scents as location markers. NPR replicates the experiment with a master sommelier, and discovers that olfactory navigation is lot more successful if you have a sophisticated nose.  Listen to the interview on "All Things Considered" with Professor Jacobs discussing olfaction.  Professor Jacobs is also partt of a team that was just funded by NSF, via the "Ideas Lab" competition on "Cracking the Olfactory Code" (http://currents.plos.org/treeoflife/article/the-ideas-lab-concept-assembling-the-tree-of-life-and-avatol/), to study olfactory navigation.  The Jacob's lab is the largest of the three - 7 PI's and $6.4M to work together on a single problem.  Her award will cover navigation in humans and trained search dogs, as well as 3 diverse invertebrates (hermit crab, slug and cockroach).  To learn more about Professor Jacob's research, visit her website at: http://jacobs.berkeley.edu