MadSci Network: Neuroscience
Query:

Re: why some odors could trigger strong emotional responses in people?

Date: Mon Nov 2 19:33:48 1998
Posted By: Michael Freed, Research Scientist, Aerospace Human Factors, NASA Ames Research Center
Area of science: Neuroscience
ID: 907920052.Ns
Message:

Here is an answer to your question, courtesy of my colleague Dr. Roger 
Remington.


There are strong connections between the parts of the brain that process
smell (rhinencephalon) and emotion (limbic system), with weaker connections
between rhinencephalon and more cognitive parts of the brain (cortex). That
is likely why smells can be recognized as familiar with strong emotional
attachments even when we can't recall the names or situations in which we
smelled those things before. This only answers part of the question: why we
observe the phenomena. The deeper question is why the brain should be wired
this way. I speculate that this has to do with our evolution from
smell-dominant ancient ancestors. In early mammals smell was the dominant
sense and it remains so today. Smell was a crucial sense, along with
hearing, that determined whether something should be eaten, fled from,
mated with, attacked, or ignored. Emotional responses of desire, fear,
aggression, and such are important motivators for these actions. Such
emotional responses continue to provide strong incentives for our behavior
to this day. The emergence of vision as our dominant sense modality
coincided with an expansion of the neocortex, the area of the brain that
controls our rational thought. The pattern of impulsive stimulus-response
behavior that characterized earlier mammals was replaced by a system that
weighed our actions against a range of outcomes in a more deliberate way
(not completely deliberate, but more so.) The rhinencephalon was not a part of
this expanded deliberative cortical development, instead retaining its
close connection with subcortical centers for emotional control (limbic
system).




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