You probably pay more attention to a newspaper with your eyes than with you, nose. But lift the paper to your nostrils (鼻孔) and inhale. The smell of newsprint might carry you back to your childhood, when your parents peruscd (精读) the paper on Sunday mornings. Or maybe some other smell takes you back-the scent of your mother's perfume, the pungency (刺激性) of a driftwood campfire. Specific odours can spark a flood of reminiscences. Psychologists call it the '"Proustian phenomenon"( 浦 式现象 ), after French novelist Marcel Proust. Near the beginnirg of the masterpiece In Search of Lost Til?te, Proust's na1Tator dunks () a madeleine cookie into a cup of tea-and the scent and taste unleash (释放) a torrent (连续不断的 ) of childhood memories for 3000 pages. Now, this phenomenon is getting the scientific treatment. Neuroscientists Rachel Herz, a cognitive neuroscientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, have discovered, for instance, how sensory memories are shared across the brain, with different brain regions remembering the sights, smells, tastes and sounds of a particular experience. Meanwhile, psychologists have demonstrated that memories triggered by smells can be more emotional, as well as more detailed, than memories not related to smells. When you inhale, odour molecules (分子) set brain cells dancing within a region known as the amvg : LIaLa ( 杏仁 区), a part of the brain that helps control emotion. In contrast, the other senses, SUCH as taste or touch, get routed through other parts of the brain before reaching the amygdala. The direct link between odours and the amygdala may help explain the emotional potency (力量) of smells."There is this unique connection between the sense of smell and the part ofthe brain that processes emotion,'says Rachel Herz.
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