The Time-Traveling Power of Smell: A Food Scientist's Perspective 🌟

Smell is a superpower that allows us to time travel 🦸🏻‍♀️⏱️

👶🏻 It shapes our personal experiences, the past and the present! It's a link to our deepest memories and thoughts 💭

🪄But, why exactly, does smell (unlike our other sense) have this almost magical ability to put us under a spell?

Let's take a look into the hidden power of food aromas 🍜 ☕️

Other videos on flavor:

0:00 Introduction
0:49 How We Smell
3:09 Smell vs Taste
3:47 Smell-Linked Memories
4:51 Scent Memories Explained
5:54 Uses of Odor-Evoked Memories

✅ Scientifically, what's our sense of smell? Smell refers to chemicals floating through the air that make their way up and into our nose. They will hit a membrane that holds a bunch of receptors waiting to identify those odorant molecules. When this happens, a signal is sent to our brain to process what we're smelling.
✅ How is smell different from taste? For taste, the receptors that interact with the certain tasting molecules are located in the oral cavity (mostly on the tongue) whereas odor receptors are in the nose.
✅ What are scent/odor memories? It can mean remembering (identifying) a certain odor, but also a memory that's associated with an odor.

🐦 @abbey_thiel

[MistyGrommesh]

I ABSOLUTELY DO smell memories. My grandfather passed away when I was 11 years old. Later in life. I believe my mid 30s, I walked into an well known Amish store... i'm not talking about an Amish tourist store... it's a store where the Amish really still shop for canning supplies, and replacemnt blades for axes, and hoes... ect. There's a section of the store devoted to laudry, and bath, where they sale lye soaps, and washboards, and beard wax... things I wasn't much familiar with. I walked passed a shelf, and I got this wiff of something. I stopped dead in my tracks. I was smelling my grandpa. I wasn't sure why, or how, but it was like he was standing next to me. I knew that smell was him. I kept circling his little shelf, inhaling deeping, until I realized which product is was... it Pine Tar Soap. I had never even heard of it before. But i bought it. I confirmed through my aunt that it was the very soap he used his whole life. I recently ran across a Pine tar deoderant at the pantry, and brought it home for my husband. It's rather comforting to know THIS IS A THING. One the flip side, there's some smells that trigger some very bad memories. I'd love to know if theres a way to reverse trauma inducing smell memories.

[astatine]

wow, yes, I did 'smell' that!

[lacucinachimica]

Hello Abbey!!!! Your videos are amazing!!!!