[extropy-chat] Questionnaire on senses

[Anders Sandberg]

Anna Taylor wrote:
> Anders Sandberg, Sat Jan 27 15:33:47 UTC 2007 wrote:
>
>>Smells can rather directly evoke memories and
>>emotions. They get directly integrated in a general
>>context in the hippocampal system rather than treated
>>as elements to be analysed and then put together.
>
> That's odd I always believed that touch and taste
> where elements that where analysed and then put
> together while, sight, smell and hearing could
> directly evoke memories and emotions.
>
> Could you please forward me some links, I'd be very
> interested in reading about it.

Well, I have always heard this as the standard view among neuroscientists.
At least my memory research colleagues (who mess around with related parts
of the brain) never doubted it, and half of all textbooks of memory start
with Proust's Madeleine-cookie quote.

As a starter this paper is a nice overview:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7117/full/nature05405.html
"Smell images and the flavour system in the human brain"

Some others:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/94/8/4119
"Emotion, olfaction, and the human amygdala: Amygdala activation during
aversive olfactory stimulation" (also, look at the citing papers below)

http://impulse.schc.sc.edu/articles/2004_01_01_Hughes.pdf
"Olfaction, Emotion & the Amygdala: arousal-dependent modulation of
long-term autobiographical memory and its association with olfaction:
beginning to unravel the Proust phenomenon?"

http://www.sirc.org/publik/smell_emotion.html

It can even enhance cognition:
http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/31/5/415
"Chemosignals of Fear Enhance Cognitive Performance in Humans"


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University