A Sense of Smell

The first cranial nerve provides the special sense of olfaction. Everything and everyplace around us emits an array of particles. These tiny chemicals enter our nose or are pushed into the nasal cavity by the tongue in the back of the throat. Here, these particles land and through a neuro-chemical dance refined over millennia, they stimulate the tiny projections of the olfactory nerve. A pair of short nerves connects directly and deeply into the brain. The amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus all figure into emotion, learning, and memory and all receive input from the nose.

From apple blossom to verbena, salt air to cedar smoke, things we love to things we’d rather avoid the ability of this tiny cluster of nerves to sense, filter, and convert information from the outside to the electrical language of our brain is absolutely something at which you can raise your nose.