Friday, May 28, 2004
Stinky Brains
Smell is the most potent memory trigger of all our senses. Evolutionarily, this makes sense: smell tells us much more than almost any sense, and works under all conditions. Vision doesn't work in the dark, hearing in silence, touch in isolation, and taste is, well, mostly smell. Odors can tell us who's who, what's what, and more. New research examines how smell and memory (and other senses) interact: memories seem to be stored in distributed parts of the brain, so that multiple modalities can call them up. I'm hoping the full report will have more details on why smell is so important, but for now this is a good, uhm, *taste.*
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