Picked a bouquet of lilacs in the evening in the old village of Bellegarde. What better to pick at dusk? What is better to smell at nightfall? Old trusting scent from the past, heavenly innocence, reminiscent scent of my native village and my parents’ garden. Now half a century later, I think like my mother, how quickly things have gone by.
Odor function and sense of smell.
Smell is emotion, smell evokes memories. Scent is strongly connected to the human subconscious.
About our senses
We see with our eyes, hear with our ears, feel with the skin, taste with our mouth and nose and smell with our nose.
Our senses are there to perceive, to come into contact with our environment (feedback, protection). Seeing and hearing play an important role in our orientation in space and in human communication through language. Seeing images and hearing sounds are very important for everyday, down-to-earth life. Smelling seems less essential for practical life. Yet the significance of smell and to a lesser extent taste is seriously underestimated. Rather, scent influences our relationship with the environment in an unconscious way. Feeling good, feeling at home has a lot to do with subtle scents of our own environment, house and fellow human beings.
Man, how and why can he smell?
How? With his nose of course. High in the nasal cavities is the olfactory epithelium, a piece of yellow-brown colored mucous membrane, in which the olfactory cells are located. These nerve cells have a chemical sensitivity to the odor molecules that enter our nose through the air. By breathing deeply through the nose, more air with odor passes directly through the olfactory epithelium, allowing us to better perceive the different odors.
The odorants are then transported by the olfactory receptor cells to the brain (olfactory bulb, olfactory bulb) , where we can recognize and possibly name the different odors.
Naming a scent is not easy. It is also less important, but we would like to pass on our olfactory experiences and olfactory feelings. And people also like to record, classify and classify everything. And scientists have also tried to do that with the different scents.
For example, Linnaeus tried to classify the scents into 7 categories according to the pleasant – unpleasant feeling they can cause in people.
From aromatic, to fragrant, ambrosial musky to less pleasantly sharp garlicky, stinking goaty, to repulsive and disgusting. Many others have tried, but it remains difficult to measure odors in an objective way.
Why do we smell? Function of smelling?
- Primarily for survival. Odor is important as a warning of danger: gas, burning smell, poisonous food. Foul odors are often dangerous odors, for example spoiled food, which we will not eat. Animals (including humans?) smell their enemies first before they see them.
- For pleasure (cultural function). Man uses his senses not only for basic survival, but also to enjoy life. Because smell sensation is directly connected to the emotional centers in the brain (limbic system), the pleasure is very immediate. Scent stimulates intuitive, direct enjoyment. Is a different kind of pleasure than watching or listening.
- For the taste; smell and taste are closely linked. Just think of children who hold their noses when their parents tell them to eat something dirty. Research also shows that, for example, we no longer taste the taste of coffee if the smell is turned off. Scent is therefore also very important for enjoying food.
- So some smells repel us, but other smells attract us. That is why heavier scents in particular also function as a means of sexual communication, i.e. to promote reproduction. Excretory organs such as sweat glands produce hormonal substances (pheromones). The fragrances in plants such as Vitex (Monikenpepper) and Ylang-Ylang also have a hormonal effect and are therefore used in herbal medicine and aromatherapy.
Odor! We better become aware of it!