Summary with my opinions
Olfactics is the study of smell. Smell plays a big and important role in our lives. Our sense of smell is so precise that we can get information by the smell rather than just seeing or hearing. This is a great nonverbal communication tool, which is broken down to five ways; smell blindness, smell adaption, smell memory, smell overload, and smell discrimination.
Smell blindness is a difficulty that people cannot smell. It happens with color blindness or deafness because they are linked with each other as physiological blockages.
We lose the difference of a particular smell when we repeatedly smell it and get used to it. It is called smell adaption. A bakery is a good example of it.
Smell memory is the ability that people recall something by a particular smell which is associated with it. For instance, a crayon may remind you of your kindergarten life.
Smell overload means very strong or a large number of odors that overwhelm people such as a person who is with too much perfume or a detergent aisle in a store.
Smell discrimination helps us tell the difference between things, for example, bananas and oranges, and one person and another.
I am so interested in smell memory that I write my opinions about smell with my experience. This is absolutely true that smell is important for us, and I came up with my grandmother when I learned it. I used to visit her with my mother and her house smelled incense sticks. It was because she had a household Buddhist altar so that I smelled them. I often said “This is the smell of her” when I went to her house. My grandmother was associated with incense sticks. She passed away when I was a junior high school student. Every time I smell incense sticks, however, I remember my grandmother, which is smell memory. I still remember how she spoke to me and how kind she was, but the smell of incense sticks clearly reminds me of her.
Consequently, I was surprised about the study of smell because it is exactly talking about my grandmother, and also I was impressed how great it is in communication.