Underappreciated Senses

Why are people happy in the happiest place on earth? Disneyland is controlling people’s minds with scents. Park operators have invented machines called “Smellitizers” that pump out specific scents, such as vanilla or citrus, depending on where someone is in the park. These scents are supposed to stimulate emotions, and they are effective because of how emotions can be controlled by scents to bring back happy memories. This is a perfect example of the prominent role scents play in evoking emotions and memories. Due to the complex anatomy of the human brain, scent is one of the most powerful senses and is strongly linked to memory and emotion. The intricate physiology of human brains creates a complicated olfactory system that links
Because scent has access to brain regions that other senses do not, memories have a much higher chance of resonating with smells. Mankind's most compelling sense and its intense links to memory and emotion are due to the complex structure of the human brain. Humans’ sense of smell could also arguably be one of the most underappreciated senses, with countless scents and strong connections to memories. It is quite powerful, as studies have shown that memories associated to smells are more vivid and stronger than other memories. These memories also seem to be more perceptual, or emotion based, than conceptual, or fact based memories. Olfactory memories are complicated and are probably among the strongest human memories. Scent is extremely powerful and discerning compared with other senses, as humans can smell about one trillion scents, “New research suggests that your nose can outperform your eyes and ears, which can discriminate between several million colors and about half a million tones” (www.brainfacts.org). Compared to other senses, humans’ sense of smell is also overwhelmingly accurate. Especially when compared to other mammals’ sense of smell, human sense of smell has been considered weak in the past, but actually has a lot of