The smell can not be reproduced or described, but it can be remembered so accurately. When you smell it again, the smell of the old wardrobe will remind people of their childhood when they climbed in and out of grandma’s wardrobe;
The taste of hometown dishes, no matter where you go, will make people feel a burst of emotion;
When you pick up the old clothes of your dead loved ones, bury your face in it and take a hard breath, as if you were back together.
Why can smell evoke such deep memories and bring such ups and downs?
A more convincing assumption is that smell is the most special of all feelings.
Because it is the only feeling that can directly reach the emotional and memory center of the brain.
The nose is the most special. It is especially loved by the brain.
Other sensory processing needs to first reach a brain region called thalamus. The thalamus is like a “switch”, which transmits the information we see, hear or feel to other parts of the brain before processing.
However, only the smell does not need to detour. The smell signal grabbed by our nose will be first transmitted to the olfactory bulb of the brain, and the nerve fibers output by the olfactory bulb will bypass the thalamus and reach the brain regions such as amygdala and hippocampus through one or two short synaptic transmission.
The amygdala is the area that processes emotions, and the hippocampus is the area for learning and memory.
Therefore, once you smell the familiar smell, the hippocampus of the brain will be activated instantly, and the emotional arousal of the amygdala will be launched.
This leads to a close relationship between emotion, memory and smell.
Studies have found that smelling objects leave more vivid marks and deeper memories in their brains, both for children and adults.
The researchers showed the subjects a series of items that could emit smell or sound. A week later, they were asked to recall these items. It was found that most people could recall smelling items.
Some studies have also found that compared with the response to visual, lexical and olfactory stimuli, smell can cause the “strongest” emotional response so far.
Humans have about 400 complete odor receptors, and the genes of these receptors add up to more than 900000 different variants, giving us the ability to recognize one trillion odors.
Our bodies are immersed in the universe with hundreds of millions of smells. The air is full of smell evidence of our birth, growth, and learning to love and be loved. We also inevitably experience all kinds of departure, farewell and loss.
Smell is like a fingerprint code. There is no image and no sound. After smelling, it is silently stored in the hippocampus as if it had never existed.
I don’t know how many years later, when I smell the same smell again, my memories pour down, and my mood is like a sail, like an afterlife.
Time has passed, but the smell helps you remember.
I see. The human body is really wonderful ~
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