Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind [Paperback]

An NRC Handelsblad Book of the Year

Offers rich discussions of olfactory perception, the conscious and subconscious impacts of smell on behavior and emotion.
Science

Decades of cognition research have shown that external stimuli spark neural patterns in particular regions of the brain. We think of the brain as a space we can map: here it responds to faces, there it perceives a sensation. But the sense of smellonly recently attracting broader attention in neurosciencedoesnt work this way. So what does the nose tell the brain, and how does the brain understand it?

A. S. Barwich turned to experts in neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, and perfumery in an effort to understand the mechanics and meaning of odors. She discovered that scents are often fickle, and do not line up with well-defined neural regions. Upending existing theories of perception, Smellosophy offers a new model for understanding how the brain senses and processes odors.

A beguiling analysis of olfactory experience that is fast becoming a core reference work in the field.
Irish Times

Lively, authoritative&Aims to rehabilitate smells neglected and marginalized status.
Wall Street Journal

This is a special book&It teaches readers a lot about olfaction. It teaches us even more about what philosophy can be.
Times Literary Supplement

This is a special book&Barwich does philosophy that is empirically directed and historically informed. It teaches readers a lot about olfaction. It teaches us even more about what philosophy can be.Seeks to banish entrenched prejudice against the nose. Barwich&argues that we could discover far more about consciousness if we would only relinquish our old-school fixation on sight&Rather than mapping the external world and constructing an accurate representation of it in the brain, our sense of smell seems to involve a continuous, ever-shifting negotiation between our interior and exterior lives.Lively, lƒ3