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Most people would say that they rely more on vision and hearing than they do on their sense of smell, yet the perception of odors is one of the brain's dominant windows on the outside world. And what an emotionally charged window it is. We hardly ever perceive odors in a purely neutral and objective way. They are often loaded with attractive or repellent feelings, and in some cases they can instantaneously make us recall memories of past events. This emotional component is not lost on the still-growing multi-billion-dollar fragrance industry.
These emotional responses may explain why olfaction, recognized as one of the five senses by ancient natural philosophers, was long considered to belong more to the realm of artists and poets than to that of thorough neuroscientific investigation. Enormous progress has nonetheless been made in recent years at every step of the olfactory pathway-from the first contact...