Post #4- Senses and Stuff

 Chosen sense: smell

A cool thing about a human's sense of smell is that it can be used as an identifier for more than just fragrant flowers or nasty burps. What's unique about scent is that our olfactory nerves don't lead directly to the thalamus where we'd consciously register smells; data from our noses can trigger our emotions and memories without people not even realizing it. One study asked participants to identify the body odor of a hypothetical assailant out of 5 samples taken from men, and the participants were accurate around 75% of the time! Everyone has their own unique smell that is almost like our olfactory fingerprint; what's more surprising is that we can use smell to distinguish emotions, as shown through a study of people who (disgustingly) smelled the sweat of people who had just watched The Jungle Book versus a horror movie. 

I think it's interesting that smell is underrated in the sense that we prioritize other senses like sight and taste a lot more and don't recognize the value of smell. It contributes a lot to our understanding of the world around us and helps to support other senses, just in ways that aren't as apparent. 

Link: https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-sense-of-smell-in-humans-is-more-powerful-than-we-think

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