SMELLING IS EASY, ALSO WONDERFULLY COMPLEX AND IMPORTANT.
Smelling is the easiest and most natural thing in the world. It creates experiences, emotions, memories and behaviors. And yet, in our age of sight and sound. scent is sidelined.
For starters, humans are extraordinarily good at it, contrary to popular belief. We don’t realize this because 19th century Western scientists created an opposition between higher and intellectual abilities (and associated this with white men) and the ‘lower’ sense of smell.
But in fact, humans are more sensitive to odor molecules than rats (31 to 10), bats or spider monkeys (58 to 23). The only animal that beats us hollow is the dog — but we can give even dogs a run for their money, with training. Human’s sense of smell is enhanced by the enormous capacities of the rest of their brain.
Smell is an emotional time-machine, we know, calling up old memories. It can also summon up disgust like no other sense, whether to body odors or other associations with a negative charge. In fact, those who are more easily disgusted seem to have conservative or authoritarian political attitudes. It’s not surprising that racism often manifests itself in descriptions of body odor.
The sense of smell works by encompassing and taking cues from other senses. If a liquid has a color, people assume it has a smell. Smell is usually disguised as taste — ketchup and mustard taste similar if you hold your breath. Smell and taste are also manipulable senses. Some cafes draw in customers by spreading the scent of cinnamon.
Research now shows that the sense of smell is an interface where the faculties of the brain meet and collaborate. Olfactory impairment has a link with dementia and other brain diseases.
For the millions who have lost their sense of smell after Covid — there is hope – the sense of smell can be trained, via steady exposure to things like rose, clove, eucalyptus, and lemon. The book shows the current limits of the science on smell too; claims about pheromones and aromatherapy should be taken with caution.
Olfactory processes are shaped by emotions, life experiences, and cultural conventions. Our expectations are crucial. This is why an odd combination of innocuous things like vanilla ice cream with ketchup tends to repel us. Traditional smelly foods, like Sweden’s sour herring or durian in Southeast Asia, are culturally specific — those familiar with them love them, others find them unbearable.
The cognitive perspective on smell can be useful in everyday life — for instance, chocolate is your unhealthy craving, simply smelling a teaspoon of it wrapped in foil for five minutes can desensitize the brain and reduce the urge.
The sense of the smell is the most ancient, but perhaps also the most refined of our senses. And most of us have a world of smells to discover.
