Smellosophy
What the Nose Tells the Mind
-
- $35.99
Publisher Description
An NRC Handelsblad Book of the Year
“Offers rich discussions of olfactory perception, the conscious and subconscious impacts of smell on behavior and emotion.”
—Science
Decades of cognition research have shown that external stimuli “spark” neural patterns in particular regions of the brain. We think of the brain as a space we can map: here it responds to faces, there it perceives a sensation. But the sense of smell—only recently attracting broader attention in neuroscience—doesn’t work this way. So what does the nose tell the brain, and how does the brain understand it?
A. S. Barwich turned to experts in neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, and perfumery in an effort to understand the mechanics and meaning of odors. She discovered that scents are often fickle, and do not line up with well-defined neural regions. Upending existing theories of perception, Smellosophy offers a new model for understanding how the brain senses and processes odors.
“A beguiling analysis of olfactory experience that is fast becoming a core reference work in the field.”
—Irish Times
“Lively, authoritative…Aims to rehabilitate smell’s neglected and marginalized status.”
—Wall Street Journal
“This is a special book…It teaches readers a lot about olfaction. It teaches us even more about what philosophy can be.”
—Times Literary Supplement
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Barwich, a neurobiologist and professor of history and the philosophy of science at Indiana University, delivers "an unapologetic declaration of love to olfaction" in this intriguing but somewhat abstruse debut. While interviewing scores of researchers, she attempts to make their findings accessible to lay readers by centering her discussion on the general questions of "what does the nose tell the brain, and how does the brain understand it?" Barwich explains that the brain processes odors differently than it does visual stimuli, and argues that science has been guilty of "sensory chauvinism," in using vision as the model for how all the other senses work. In fact, she proposes, odor processing might be the better model, given that vision evolved relatively late among the senses (which, she tantalizingly suggests, may number more than five; scientists have hypothesized the existence of as many as 27). Unfortunately, her work oscillates between understandable ideas for instance, comparing the brain's odor processing to encryption devices such as the WWII-era Enigma machine and intimidating terminology ("your brain depicts transient information patterns.... without a superimposed matrix of chemical classes to accommodate for countless molecular permutations"). Despite the fascinating data and concepts presented, the neuroscience Barich discusses is often overly complex and thus not likely to be fully accessible to the wide audience aimed for.
