How the brain recognizes smells, or subconscious smelling

It's no surprise that the human brain can process odors without the intervention of the conscious mind. An experiment with male sweat demonstrated just how sophisticated this process can be. Brain scans showed that women reacted differently when they smelled the sweat of aroused men, even though almost none consciously identified the odor as sweat. The experiment described above most clearly demonstrated the direct connection between the sense of smell and the brain. Marketers should be aware that the brain has the ability to process scents without engaging conscious awareness. This predisposition means, among other things, that existing market research tools, such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, etc., will be particularly unreliable when it comes to analyzing scents. Subconscious processing If a product, service, or office has a scent associated with it—whether it's a carefully crafted brand aroma or a vanilla aroma exploited to its limits—that scent will likely be subconsciously transformed. The brain will automatically associate it with a specific product or situation. Course of the experience Denise Chen, an assistant professor of psychology at Rice University in the US, recruited volunteers for an olfactory test. She placed absorbent pads under the men's armpits. While wearing these pads, they watched either an erotic film or another neutral, non-erotic image. After the screening, the women sniffed the sweaty pads along with several pads from a control group. The women's brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Awareness Almost all the women (17 of 19) denied smelling sweat or anything human. None of the women could distinguish between sexual and neutral sweat. However, their brain activity showed otherwise. Subconscious Two brain regions responded more strongly to men's sexual sweat than to any other odor. Interestingly, the hypothalamus, the brain region responsible for sexual behavior, showed no response to the odors at all. The researcher discovered that the brain somehow recognizes the social or emotional information contained in sweat, treating it differently from other odors.