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3 colors, 4 tastes...,
but over 5 000 different smells !
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Vision
only depends on the the 3 primary colors
and on the various intensities of light. |
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Taste is a relatively poor sense: we
differentiate only four different tastes : sweet, salty, acid and
bitter. Therefore what we usually call taste 80% of the time refer to
the sense of smell. Food is very insipid when we have a blocked nose. |
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Hearing
makes it possible to differentiate
frequencies and levels. A
sound however contains very little information. It is one of the easiest
thing to digitalise and to handle with a computer !
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The
human
sense of smell can detect up to 5,000 different fragrances who
can on top of that mix together, just like the colors. A smell can be
woody, amber, sensual, musked, powdered, resin-like, sweet, subtil ,
etc...
A smell
can also be whatever one wishes
in function of circumstances and memories.
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The smelly particles are very
small elements that penetrate easily in the blood, easier than food
does, thanks to the very thin surfaces of exchange that make up the
alveoles and capillaries of the lungs.
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If vision informs us on the appearrances
of beings and things, smell gives us insight into their intimate
substance.
Smell is no mysterious
radiation: it is created when when a tiny part of that substance of
things, carried by a gentle breeze, meets one of the
50 millions cellules making up the olfactory system
in the depth of the nose.
The receptive cell is a
slightly peculiar neurone: the axone. Very sensitive to toxic
fumes and microbes, however it is soon replaced when destroyed.
The information collected
by the membrane of the nose travels then along the axone, which is like
an extension of the neurone, until it reaches the olfactory
bulb located at the entrance
of the brain. To avoid confusion and mix-up due to simultaneous arrival
of the information collected by the millions of axones making up the
olfactory nerve, the inner nervous system provides a kind of gathering
filter, which puts together all the signals of the same nature.
Thus organised, the information is decoded by the brain and the smell
is then identified. Neurophysiologists can therefore have an «image»
of certain smells.
From the evolutive
point of view, the sense of smell is surely the most primitive:
smells have allowed the vertebrates to distinguish food, individuals,
predators. Smells have provided both the notion of pleasure
(flower, perfumes...) and that of danger.
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