Smell and Perception

This Febreze commercial always amazes me. This room smelled of dirty dogs, mold and old used furniture, yet they made it smell good to these people! Because they had removed the bad odor with Febreze. The participants were pleased with what they were smelling, actually putting pillows up to their noses, this reflects the amygdala which we read about in our textbook. The amygdala is what merits our emotional reaction to smells.

This is what companies like Febreze work to achieve, because we are able to smell multiple odor's at a time. Their goal was to make a product that eliminated the other smells in the air, so that only the Febreze was noticed. They use a chemical called beta-cyclodextrin. This carbohydrate based chemical actually removes the bad odor allowing us to only smell the Febreze.