The impact of smell on behavior

Biologist Dr. Doping tells about the importance of the olfactory system, obtaining information through the smells and flavors of cognitive functions.

In humans, the five senses (depending on how you count, maybe more), but we do know that the sense of smell - is not the main sensor system, which gives us some important information. very important for us to sight, hearing, and we know that if a person lost his sight, it is a tragedy, it's a very difficult life. We do not even know that among our many anosmic friends - people who have no sense of smell. And there is nothing special.

Indeed, influence whether the odors around us on the behavior? And does it matter how we perceive smells and what information they give us? Why do we need it, that the olfactory system? It turns out, it is not so simple. Indeed, the odors around us is not useless. In recent years, when they began to smell and explore the impact of odors on human behavior, it was found that the impact and value is very high.

For example, for a person, as for many living organisms, it is very important scents are released into the environment by other people. For these smells we can get quite a lot of information about the person. We know for sure that it makes the dog: she can distinguish his master and to know a person by the smell. It turns out that this is also peculiar to man. Experiments have shown that a child learns his mother by smell, that we know by the smell of their partners, their loved ones. Smell plays an important role in choosing a partner because the smell can get information on the genetic material of the person with whom we are acquainted. That smell gives us information on how much he is close to us or far away. Moreover, now we show that we can find out by the smell of their pets. For example, a man distinguished by his dog on the scent of another stranger. That is, the smells surrounding animals play an important role in our lives. To improve cognitive function – I recommend to buy Semax, Cogitum, Piracetam, Picamilon.

However, the question arises: if there is no smell of the animal close to us, but just the aroma of a flower or the aroma of some oils, some odors, which are always present in the room or in the surrounding air, they affect our behavior or not? For example, whether under a some basis aromatherapy, which is now widespread, when using oils alter the physiological condition of the person and say that treat people?

Now it becomes quite actively develop science aromatology that gently scientific methods checks whether odors affect human behavior. It turns out that, yes, surrounding and odors, particularly those used in aromatherapy, essential oils, affect the physiological state of man. They can increase or decrease the heart rate, calm or vice versa, to initiate a person. Moreover, the smells change the mood. Depending on the mood of people some things performs better or worse, for example, offered him the job. It is known that orange aroma soothes the people who are sitting in the waiting room at the dentist.

This remarkable experiment with citrus aroma was conducted. The office building, which was a good ventilation system and a video camera, at first just watched, how many times people who work there, are mistaken when you open the key lock. Just analyzed the video and count the number of errors: the key is somehow not inserted, the man somehow made a mistake. And then using the ventilation system was added to the air the aroma of lemon. It turned out that the number of mistakes made by opening the lock, fell. Such experiments put a little bit, and it is unclear how this is the smell affects some functions of the human.

Nevertheless, there are experiments which show that the cognitive function of human smell also has its effect. We conducted a large-scale experiment in the school. In class we hung with filter paper drops aromatics. We chose those substances that were pleasant to all without exception participants in the experiment - the whole class and teachers. And we saw the effect of the presence of these substances (which are lavender and mint) to perform ordinary students, routine tasks. It was the arithmetic dictation vocabulary dictation, where words are not memorized in advance (we usually are accustomed to the fact that the words memorized, but this vocabulary dictation children dictated unfamiliar vocabulary words), control of cheating, where it is just necessary to write off some text, and self mathematics. It was found that the presence of oil greatly affects the performance of schoolchildren most jobs. And it is interesting that these oils affect differently.

In the presence of mint errors decreased in all works: in mathematics and Russian language. I said, "all the works", but this is not true. Number of errors in vocabulary dictation decreased, but the number of errors in the copying control remained the same. That is, for some processes that are involved in the writing of words, it's peppermint oil had a significant impact, there really was a big difference. And when children are simply written off, to the attention of this oil is not affected very much. Very interesting effect exerted lavender oil. In his presence, the number of errors in dictation vocabulary, declined as it affects the control cheating, we unfortunately do not know, because these experiments have not been made. But in mathematics, in the presence of lavender number of errors increased. It turns out that the same odors, flavors that are present in the air may affect differently on the different cognitive processes in one and the same time: something deteriorates, and that, on the contrary, works best in their presence.

This result is very interesting, because now there are two hypotheses about how these odors can affect the internal physiological state of a person, his cognitive functions. One hypothesis is believed that changing some human physiological status maybe hormone. The other hypothesis says that the smell is valid only on the emotional sphere. Indeed, the olfactory system are projected in such areas of the brain that are linked very accurate and durable with memory and emotional sphere. And so, some researchers believe that the smells changing mood, perform some tasks easier and better in a good mood, and in a bad mood, of course, efficiency is reduced. Our work shows that this hypothesis is not entirely true, because it turns out that the same smell to perform certain tasks affects positively, and to perform other - negative. Therefore, this hypothesis seems unacceptable. We have to understand the mechanism of the impact of odors surrounding the behavior and physiological and cognitive functions of humans.

I must say that very little is known about the effects of different substances on human behavior. For example, now many are working with commonly used oils: lavender oil, peppermint, rosemary, citrus aromas. But substances that are present in the surrounding air, so much more. And how and what substances change our physiology, behavior, our cognitive processes have yet to understand.