Back in 2006, seven researchers conducted an experiment to study the impact ‘odour-related’ words had on the brain. In short, they wanted to know if reading about smelly things could make you smell those things.
Image: Seeds and spices on spoons by Marco Verch on Flickr, used under a CC-BY-2.0 licence.
Recruiting 19 Spanish men and 4 women, with an average age of 23-24 years, the researchers began by identify which words people associated with smell. They asked experiment participants to rate nouns and adjectives according to how much they referred to, or reminded them of, a smell. They then selected two groups of 60 words to use in the experiment: one group had strong smell associations; one had no link to anything whiffy. The words in each group were chosen so each had a similar average word length and a similar average frequency of use.
The participants were then ready to have their brains scanned. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they read through all 120 words in their head, receiving them in alternating blocks of strong smelly words and non-smelly words.
Once the researchers had processed the scan data, they found that when participants read odour-related words, the ‘primary olfactory areas’ of the brain were sparked. These are areas where sensory information received by the nose is sent for processing. It might be said then, that reading a smelly word in your head prompts a response akin to smelling the actual smell.
The implications for writers are clear: if you want to create a convincing scene and encourage immersion in your story, drop in some smelly words. The terms used by the researchers included turpentine, garlic, poo, incense, jasmine, vinegar and cinnamon. Now there’s a challenging set of writing prompts… anyone want to craft a story using all those? I bet it’ll be a stinker.
Research reference:
Gonzalez, J. et al. (2006) Reading cinnamon activates olfactory brain regions. NeuroImage, 32, 906-912.