The importance of smell: this is how olfactory marketing seduces you

• CRISTINA G. LUCIO

  Madrid

• ILLUSTRATION: SEAN MACKAOUI

Updated Monday, November 14, 2022-02:18

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• Apothecary García Living without smell beyond the coronavirus

We are going to pose a dilemma.

If he had to do without one sense, which one would he choose?

Think it over.

Don't rush.

Clever?

If you have chosen smell without hesitation, you should give her choice a second thought.

This most unknown -and often neglected- of the senses is a powerful tool that is key to your safety, your connection with the environment and much of the delight you experience.

Furthermore, judging by the latest research, it could become an important ally of medicine.

Does it seem little to you?

“If the sense of smell was not essential for our survival, why would our nose and nostrils occupy such a prominent space on our face?” asks Bill Hansson, director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena ( Germany) and author of

(Crítica), a work on the amazing world of smells that is published on the 23rd of this month.

“Every time we breathe, our sense of smell monitors what is happening around us.

In each inspiration it makes an analysis from the chemical point of view of what is in the environment.

Even when we are asleep.

, such as a fire, or if what we are going to eat is not in good condition.

But it also provides us with the delicate nuances of pleasure, for example when we eat a strawberry, drink our favorite wine or snuggle up next to the armpit of a loved one.

We think that smell is not important because, in general,

.

“With the pandemic, we have realized a little more.

Millions of people have experienced, most temporarily, what it means to be without the ability to smell », underlines Hansson by phone, convalescing these days from Covid and with his own sense of smell« somewhat diminished but still working ».

To begin with, losing your sense of smell also means losing your taste to a great extent.

“Taste allows us to discriminate between sweet, salty, bitter, acid and umami.

», points out Laura López-Mascaraque, a neuroscientist at the Cajal Institute, who invites anyone who wants to prove it to eat an orange with a stuffy nose.

“The nose is our chemical sensor.

It helps us in the relationship with the outside world and allows us to distinguish up to a billion different aromas", explains the researcher.

"And it's closely related to what we call the emotional brain, the limbic system, so it has great evocative power."

This ability of aromas to transport us to another time and another place is what is called

in allusion to the memory of childhood evoked by the smell of cupcakes that the French writer described in In Search of Lost Time.

Only smell and other more complex stimuli, such as music, have the power to trigger emotions and release memories in such a vivid and intense way.

“That is why

is being used more and more.

There are companies that already have their own aroma, an odotype, which could be more effective than the traditional logo to communicate, to convey sensations and emotions”, says López-Mascaraque.

Hansson, for his part, adds a couple of examples of this persuasion that comes through the nose: “Many men love the smell of a new car.

So it is common to use that fragrance, which can be bought, to better sell a second-hand car.

The same goes for travel: a conveniently vaporized scent of coconut at an agency helps sell more tickets to exotic places.”

an ignored meaning

Smell has traditionally been a great forgotten also for science, so we continue to have more questions than answers about its implications.

His relationship with Covid has to some extent fueled interest in the enigmas that lie beyond our nose, although researchers fear that this stimulus is a "flower of a day".

"Smell is the sense with which we interact the most, even if we don't realize it, and we need to know it better," says López-Mascaraque, who, in addition to being a researcher at the Cajal Institute in Madrid, also chairs the

, an association that encompasses scientists from different disciplines interested in the study of smell.

Doctors, engineers, veterinarians or biologists research on the net from how a smell is capable of attracting a moth from a great distance, to the usefulness of

to measure pollution, through the relationship between smell and some diseases, such as neurodegenerative.

Alino Martínez, Professor of Human Anatomy and Embryology at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, is the leader of the Neuroplasticity and Neurodegeneration group which, among other issues, studies the links between loss of smell and disorders such as

, among others.

"We know that hyposmia, the reduction in the ability to perceive odors, is one of the first signs of these neurodegenerative diseases," explains Martínez.

This loss, continues the researcher, can occur decades before the motor or cognitive symptoms typical of these disorders appear, so that, in the future, it could serve as a clinical alert, a sign for their detection.

"Unfortunately, these pathologies cannot be stopped today, but one day it may become a tool for early diagnosis and subsequent treatment," he says.

As with sight and hearing, we also progressively lose olfactory capacity as we age.

But in the case of neurodegenerative diseases, this loss is much faster and more pronounced.

The researchers still do not know the causes of this relationship, although one of the hypotheses they handle has to do with the accumulation of the pathological proteins characteristic of these diseases in the olfactory bulb, one of the processing centers of smell.

Martínez's team performs proteomic studies on samples of healthy and diseased brain tissues to try to find

pathological biomarkers.

The olfactory bulb is connected to both the amygdala and the hippocampus, keys to emotions and memory.

That is why there is nothing more evocative of a memory than a smell and, therefore, although some smells are innately unpleasant to us, such as the smell of a corpse, the perception of others is closely related to culture or our own previous experience.

If you have ever gotten drunk on a drink that was too sweet, it is more than likely that you have felt nauseated just by noticing its aroma nearby.

"That's called

.

His body, in this case thanks to smell, is telling him: this has made you feel bad, don't take it again », highlights Alino Martínez.

From the Functional Neuroanatomy Group of the Spanish Olfactory Network, Enrique Lanuza, professor at the University of Valencia, studies the role of olfactory stimuli in behavioral control, fundamentally using animals as an experimental model.

As he explains, the pheromone system that is key to the behavior of many animals does not work in humans.

"It atrophies soon after birth, and although in a small percentage of the population there seems to be a vestige, it has never been possible to demonstrate that this vestige is functional," explains Lanuza.

However, this does not prevent that in our normal olfactory system «there can be

».

“For example, it has been shown that in the areola of the nipple of women who have just given birth there are glands, the Montgomery glands, that produce a secretion that induces the baby to suckle.

That is an olfactory signal that clearly has a pheromonal function in humans », he clarifies.

«There are many signals that we emit, especially in terms of social behavior, where smell plays a very important role, even if we are not very aware... I always tell my students in class: 'look at the money that we we spend on smelling good and not smelling bad'”, he emphasizes.

The potential of odors for different clinical purposes is enormous, although it is still in its infancy.

Research is being carried out, for example, on the possibility of using the magnificent sense of smell of dogs to detect diseases such as cancer, although the results are still mixed;

and the possibilities of aromatherapy are explored, "although, beyond creating a pleasant olfactory environment, at the moment

", the researchers consulted agree.

If at this point you're still thinking in the sense you'd be able to do without, follow Bill Hansson's advice: “None.

I don't want to imagine life without being able to see, hear or touch, but also without being able to smell or taste.

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