What is clear is that there are certain smells that can trigger very specific memories that can affect how we feel. These are some general associations, however, each person creates their own associations. The smell of bread from a bakery might make us hungry, the smell of chlorine reminds us of the summer, the smell of coffee reminds us of breakfast or work and thus an infinity of associations between different smells and memories. Why is the sense of smell linked to our memories? Our sensitivity for perceiving odors, combined with our capacity to associate stimuli, makes our sense of smell a direct link to our memory. How many times have you been at a store or just walking around and a perfume odor hits your nose and you remember someone dear to you? Surely there are many situations, places or people to which we associate certain odors and, in the same way, these odors quickly lead us to remember those same stimuli. Sense of Smell: relationship with our memoriesĪs we have seen, the sense of smell directly accesses our memory and our emotions. The sense of smell triggers a fight or flight response that helps survival. The perception of a bad odor almost immediately triggers an avoidance behavior towards the smell.įor example, if you ever enter your apartment and it smells like gas, you immediately evacuate and call the police or firefighters. Why is smell sensitive to these odors? Basically, because it is an adaptive trait since the bad odor perception is linked with two basic emotions that favor our survival: disgust and fear. Thanks to the structure of our nose, we are able to perceive bad odors in lower concentrations than good odors. However, it still remains very sensitive, especially to bad odors.
When they receive the nerve impulses of the scents, they trigger strong emotions based on previous experiences because the limbic system has access to situational memories, people or places related to the perceived olfactory sensations.Īs we mentioned before, our sense of smell is much less developed than most animals. On the other hand, the limbic system is related to memory and emotions.The frontal lobe is responsible for recognizing the odor.In the olfactory bulb, the sensory receptors responsible for transmitting the messages of the scents, send the information to two areas:.Activation of these receptors generates, from one of the 12 pairs of cranial nerves, nerve impulses that are sent directly to the olfactory bulb and from there to the cerebral cortex (where “sensation” occurs).Once dissolved, the compounds act chemically on olfactory receptors that detect odors.Odor molecules in the form of chemical compounds that float in the air, reach the nostrils and dissolve in the humidities of the yellow pituitary.Sense of Smell: The process of smellĪlthough the process of smell is more complex than any attempt to explain it, we could explain the process of smell by the following steps: On the other hand, in addition to breathing, the nose allows different odors to penetrate from the outside and, thanks to the olfactory receptors located in the nostrils, perceive, feel and differentiate various odors.
It is part of our respiratory system allowing us to breathe in and out. The nose is a protuberance located between the eyes and the mouth. To begin to understand what is smell we must talk about the organ responsible for this sense: the nose.
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