How smell rules your life

Very Cool!! I love the New Scientist website - bite-sized nuggets of think!

This is very interesting :

Quote:Other work has found that scent can influence our cognitive skills. A study this year by William Overman and colleagues at the University of North Carolina Wilmington found that when men were subjected to a novel smell - either good or bad - during a gambling task used to test decision-making skills, they performed significantly worse than normal. The researchers conclude the scent stimulated brain areas connected with emotion, making their decisions emotional rather than rational (Behavioral Brain Research, vol 218, p 64). Smells also seem to direct our visual attention, and they may play a key role in consolidating memories too (see "Blast from the past").

SO how about women? A "novel smell" such as a distinctive new cologne smell can have a steering effect to dilute rationalism? I wonder if this plays into the success of the scent-makers and perfumers over the years, inspiring the emotive response in the sniffers.

This one is intriguing - what can be isolated from tears to use in women's pheromone products if it is a novel pheromone or chemosignal, a version of something like "Down Boy" :

Quote:Another study this year, by Yaara Yeshurun at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, and her team found that the imperceptible smell of women's tears decreases sexual arousal in men (Science, vol 331, p 226).

I wonder if this indicates that scents and maybe pheromones are less effective on people who are depressed ?

Quote:Slowly but surely, the nerves grew back and her sense of smell returned. In doing so, she experienced the strong link between smell and mood - during bouts of depression, she struggled to smell, but in happier times smells came back.