Platial | Who and What's Nearby
Platial | Who and What's Nearby
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Storefront Tour, Location 2
The sense of taste is actually composed of over 80% odor moving across our nasal passages at the soft palette in our mouths. People who suffer from a loss of smell, or anosmia, almost entirely lose all sense of taste as well. The smell of such things as baked butterfat, almond paste, honeyed lime, fresh eggs in lemon curd and warmed cocoa are all reduced to textures and such broad categories as sweet, salty, bitter and sour. The unique combinations of scent are what render food delectable and unforgettable.
Possibly the most famous odor and flavor-induced memory comes from Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time. Most of our odor memories take us back to the very first 10 years of life. Common folklore surrounding the link between odor and memory prompted neuroscientists to coin the term the “Proust Phenomenon.” It was the smell and taste of the author’s legendary limeflower tea-logged madelaine cookie that sent him on a multi-tomed trek into visions of past memories.
But recent research has shown that while odor may not be a stronger trigger of memory than verbal or visual stimuli, it arouses a more emotional response and is connected to older memories. Smell is unique in its ability to directly access the amygdala, an emotional center of the brain that is part of the limbic system governing survival behaviors like emotion, appetite, fear, reproduction, the storage of memories and their relation to physical sensation. While a fear-inducing experience may only need a single association with an odor to set your adrenaline going the next time you catch a whiff of the same substance, positive correlations with odors take a much longer time to develop. More emotionally-arousing information increases amygdalar activity, and that activity correlates with retention of the memory.
Odor is also one of our most important sources of information about the external world, familiarizing us with what our home smells like and alerting us to whether something is wrong if it smells different. We form strong associations with odor through repetition. Although you may be smelling a bakery right now, it may not remind you of food at all. The grandmother of one Smelling Committee member, for example, used to wear vanilla as perfume. Whenever she baked cookies, her husband would get an erection. The repeated associations of the vanilla smell with his wife’s body and sexuality led to a strong physiological and emotional response to the smell of vanilla in any context.
Storefront Tour, Location 2
The sense of taste is actually composed of over 80% odor moving across our nasal passages at the soft palette in our mouths. People who suffer from a loss of smell, or anosmia, almost entirely lose all sense of taste as well. The smell of such things as baked butterfat, almond paste, honeyed lime, fresh eggs in lemon curd and warmed cocoa are all reduced to textures and such broad categories as sweet, salty, bitter and sour. The unique combinations of scent are what render food delectable and unforgettable.
Possibly the most famous odor and flavor-induced memory comes from Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time. Most of our odor memories take us back to the very first 10 years of life. Common folklore surrounding the link between odor and memory prompted neuroscientists to coin the term the “Proust Phenomenon.” It was the smell and taste of the author’s legendary limeflower tea-logged madelaine cookie that sent him on a multi-tomed trek into visions of past memories.
But recent research has shown that while odor may not be a stronger trigger of memory than verbal or visual stimuli, it arouses a more emotional response and is connected to older memories. Smell is unique in its ability to directly access the amygdala, an emotional center of the brain that is part of the limbic system governing survival behaviors like emotion, appetite, fear, reproduction, the storage of memories and their relation to physical sensation. While a fear-inducing experience may only need a single association with an odor to set your adrenaline going the next time you catch a whiff of the same substance, positive correlations with odors take a much longer time to develop. More emotionally-arousing information increases amygdalar activity, and that activity correlates with retention of the memory.
Odor is also one of our most important sources of information about the external world, familiarizing us with what our home smells like and alerting us to whether something is wrong if it smells different. We form strong associations with odor through repetition. Although you may be smelling a bakery right now, it may not remind you of food at all. The grandmother of one Smelling Committee member, for example, used to wear vanilla as perfume. Whenever she baked cookies, her husband would get an erection. The repeated associations of the vanilla smell with his wife’s body and sexuality led to a strong physiological and emotional response to the smell of vanilla in any context.
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