The power
of smell on our subconscious
Most of us have five senses. Although
they’re all important, it is a
fact that one of them gets scant consideration:
smell.
Unlike other mammals, humans tend to neglect
their smell and rely only on their vision.
We don’t have names for odours and
this shows how little importance we attach
to them compared to colors and sounds.
Yet smell, the most primitive of our senses,
was the first to appear in the history
of evolution.
It has been observed that newborns have
a keen sense of smell whereas their other
sensations are uncertain.
Aren’t we filled with childhood
memories when we pass in front of a bakery?
Doesn’t the smell of a baking cake
bring us back to our school years?
What about the smell of fresh ground coffee
coming from a roaster or in a café,
where an odour-filled plate makes your
mouth water?
How about that exquisitely perfumed body
lotion that gives you a feeling of well-being
and sensual delight?
Our body odour plays an important role
in our sex life. Sexual intimacy can
be affected by our sense of smell. Certain
lotions can stimulate desire.
Our sense of smell allows us to identify
that which other senses can’t:
a forthcoming menacing weather, someone’s
aura, or the odour of someone whose perfumes
can’t conceal.
Our nose plays a more important role than
we think in our relations with people.
Each individual has his own body odour
to which people unconsciously react.
Our prehistoric ancestors smelled each
other as a get-acquainted gesture…
Our smelling apparatus
The olfactory cells are located in the
upper regions of the nasal cavity, in
a mucus called "olfactory epithelium".
Fibres extend these cells into the olfactory
bulb which is connected to the olfactory
area of the brain.
Odour-filled molecules
are dissolved into the nasal mucus and
stimulate the sensory cells, setting
off a nervous impulse which travels as
far as the openings in the ethmoid bone.
From there it reaches the olfactory bulb
and the olfactory nerves.
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