On the one hand, "...olfaction is our slow sense, for it depends on messages carried not at the speed of light or of sound, but at the far statelier pace of a bypassing breeze, a pocket of air enriched with the sort of small, volatile molecules that our nasal-based odor receptors can read.
Yet, on the other hand, olfaction is our quickest sense. Whereas new signals detected from the visual system, auditory system, proprioception (body position), nociception (pain) and gustation (taste) "must first be assimilated by a structural way station called the thalamus before reaching the brain’s interpretive regions, odiferous messages barrel along dedicated pathways straight from the nose and right into the brain’s olfactory cortex, for instant processing. Importantly, the olfactory cortex is embedded within the brain’s limbic system and amygdala, where emotions are born and emotional memories stored. That’s why smells, feelings and memories become so easily and intimately entangled...
...numerous studies have shown that smell memory is long and resilient, and that the earliest odor associations we make often stick...
...while the word and visual cues elicited associations largely from subjects’ adolescence and young adulthood, the smell cues evoked thoughts of early childhood, under the age of 10. And despite the comparative antiquity of such memories, Dr. Larsson said, people described them in exceptionally rich and emotional terms, and they were much likelier to report the sudden sensation of being brought back in time...
...Dr. Larsson attributes the youthfulness of smell memories to the fact that our olfaction is the first of our senses to mature and only later cedes cognitive primacy to vision and words, while the cortical link between olfaction and emotion ensures that those early sensations keep their bloom all life long."
Link
Perception is one of the most basic epistemic sources we have. Yet, most epistemologists spend their entire philosophical lives using examples from vision(e.g. apprehending objects) or audition (e.g. understanding assertions). Perhaps olfaction is the most basic of all the senses, in the sense that the signal from external stimuli is least compromised by interpretation during its path to consciousness? All other sensory inputs must survive selective processing by the thalamus and an unpredictable journey to various parts of the cerebral cortex.
Even though most people struggle to identify smells conceptually, they can recognise smells with great reliability and also trigger memories more powerfully than almost any other stimulus: internal or external. In fact, when considering how we bootstrap ourselves into the world; how we align our experience of the world with what exists; perhaps olfaction is the biggest piece of leather?
August 6 2008, 12:45:54 UTC 4 years ago
Worry: Olfaction is not a particularly good sense. In fact it's a shitty perceptual mode when compared with any of the other senses. From an evolutionary perspective, the other four senses are far more important. If one is going to lose a sense, smell isn't a bad choice. If one is going to have only one sense, smell is a terrible choice.
Maybe our sense of taste is more expendable than our sense of smell. Maybe. I note in passing that one of the chief problems associated with anosmia is its effect on one's sense of taste and the consequent eating problems the loss of taste causes. But even if we allow that smell is more important than taste (for avoiding gas leaks or decay), it doesn't hold a candle to touch, sight, or hearing. One can gain a picture of the world through any of these latter three that is far more detailed than anything available through smell. And the ways one's life can be improved by these senses are more diverse and more common than for smell.
Certainly smell can often evoke some of the most compelling memories, but some sights, sounds, and textures can do that too.
August 6 2008, 21:50:26 UTC 4 years ago
The end of the NY times article is important on this point:
"Dr. Larsson attributes the youthfulness of smell memories to the fact that our olfaction is the first of our senses to mature and only later cedes cognitive primacy to vision and words, while the cortical link between olfaction and emotion ensures that those early sensations keep their bloom all life long." <- I should add this to the main post.
August 14 2008, 17:44:12 UTC 4 years ago
Like souls remembering, waiting, hoping
Interesting post, Kate! It of course brings to mind Proust's great description from Swann’s Way. There, the narrator describes how “at the very instant when the mouthful of tea mixed with cake crumbs touched my palate, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening inside me. A delicious pleasure had invaded me, isolated me, without my having any notion of its cause.” As he tracked down its cause, an episode from his past was drawn out such that “all of Combray and its surroundings… emerged, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea” (48). The “smell and taste” of the tea, “like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping” are contrasted with “the sight of the little Madeleine [that] had not reminded me of anything” (47).December 15 2010, 07:06:10 UTC 2 years ago
hermes handbags Coach handbags hermes birkin handbags hermes purses discount hermes handbags hermes kelly handbags hermes lindy handbags hermes wallets hermes birkin bags burberry handbags hermes handbag coach handbags
January 17 2011, 01:16:07 UTC 2 years ago