[extropy-chat] Questionnaire on senses

[Anders Sandberg]

Anna Taylor wrote:
> My apology Anders.  I wasn't very clear with that
> response.  From what I have read, I believed that
> along side of smell, that sight and hearing could also
> evoke memories and emotion.

Well, *obviously* all senses can evoke memories and emotion. It would
actually be a rather strange sense if a stimuli could not do it.

It is just that olfaction is directly connected to the the brain systems
that have developed emotional and memory functions. It is not hard to
understand the association if you think about how rats experience the
world (and our ancestors were after all rat-like creatures). To a rat
places are mainly constellations of smells, and this appears to be how
places are represented in the hippocampus: conjunctions of smells, and
some other sensory information.

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