Why Is It Easier For Smart People To Fight And Lose? The Brain Bug You Must Know

The brain is nothing more than an organ in the human body. Because of this, the entire system has various habits, personalities, old operating methods and low efficiency. It has evolved over millions of years, and it has become as complicated as it is now, and it has accumulated a lot of garbage. It's like a hard disk, filled with outdated software programs and obsolete download files, but the basic process is often interrupted. For example, those long-dead websites always pop up damn ads to tell you all kinds of discount news, but you want to All you do is open an email!

In A Nutshell, The Brain Makes Mistakes.

Half A Bottle Of Water Sloshing-Why Smart People Fight More Easily To Lose

One of the most irritating situations is probably arguing with someone who firmly believes that you are right, and you know that they are really wrong, and you have proved it with facts and logic, but the other party still refuses to admit the mistake. I once witnessed two people having a quarrel. One of them insisted that it is the 20th century and not the 21st century.

A diametrically opposed situation is a psychological phenomenon called "impersonator syndrome." In many fields, some highly accomplished high achievers, although their strength has been tangibly proven, they always underestimate their abilities and achievements. There are many social factors that cause this phenomenon. For example, in a traditionally male-dominated environment (in other words, most environments), this phenomenon is especially common among successful women, so it is likely to be influenced by social stereotypes, prejudices, cultural concepts, etc. . But it is not limited to what happens to women. The more interesting phenomenon is that it particularly significantly affects high achievers, often people with high levels of intelligence.

Guess which scientist said before his death: "The countless praises I have received in my life make me feel uneasy. I feel compelled to consider myself a fraudster."

Albert Einstein. Obviously Can't Be Considered Mediocre, Right?

Smart people suffer from the imposter syndrome, and the less intelligent people don’t know where to gain self-confidence. These two characteristics are often intertwined in a desperate way. This is why modern public issues are distorted to a mess. Vaccines, climate change and other major issues are not discussed by trained experts, but are constantly attacked by people with ignorant personal opinions. In the final analysis, the brain's various quirks are blamed.

Basically, we rely on others as a source of information and support our own opinions, beliefs, or self-worth. We will explain this further when we discuss social psychology in Chapter 7. What I want to say here is that it seems that the more confident a person is, the more persuasive he appears, and the more people are willing to believe him. Many studies have confirmed this, such as a series of studies on court response by Penrod and Custer in the 1990s. They investigated the extent to which the jurors believed the witness’s testimony, and found that those witnesses who acted confidently and positively were far more likely to obtain the juror’s testimony than those who looked nervous, hesitant, and uncertain about the specific details they said. trust. Their findings are obviously worrisome, because the content of the testimony does not have as much impact on the jury's verdict as the attitude expressed, and it is bound to bring serious consequences to the judicial system. Moreover, no one would say that this phenomenon is limited to court responses, right? Does anyone dare to say that there is no similar situation in politics?

Modern politicians are all trained in the media and can confidently and fluently deliver long talks on any topic that is actually worthless. Or worse, commit some particularly stupid mistakes, such as "They mistakenly lowered me" (George Bush) or "Most of our imported goods come from overseas" (or George Bush). Some people might think that in the end, the smartest person must be in charge of the direction of things, because the smarter the person, the better the job done. But the facts we often see seem to be counter-intuitive. The smarter a person is, the more likely they are to be less confident in their opinions, and the easier it is to give people the impression of being less confident and therefore untrusted. The probability is higher.

The reason why smart people are not so confident may be that people are often hostile to those who show off knowledge. I am a well-trained neuroscientist, but unless asked directly, I wouldn’t tell others that way, because I once got a response like this: “Oh, I think I’m pretty smart, right?”

Will other people have the same "treatment"? If you tell someone that you are an Olympic sprinter, would someone say "Oh, I think I'm fast, right"? It seems impossible! Nevertheless, in the end I will say "I am a neuroscientist, but I am not as good as it sounds." Anti-intellectualism has countless social and cultural roots, but another possible reason is that it shows the brain's self-centered or "self-interest" prejudice and the tendency to fear danger. People care about their social status and wealth, and people who seem to be smarter than themselves may pose a threat. Those who are taller and stronger, although frightening, are a known attribute. Having a fit body is easy to understand: They are nothing more than going to the gym more often or sticking to the sport of their choice for longer, right? That's the case with muscles and the like. Anyone can be like them, as long as they do the same, if we have the time or willingness.

However, a person who is smarter than yourself is unknown. Their behavior makes you unpredictable or incomprehensible, and the brain is completely unclear about whether they are dangerous. As a result, the ancient instinct of "be careful of everything rather than regretting it" is activated, triggering suspicion and hostility. Of course, a person can also become smarter through learning and research, but this is far more complicated and more uncertain than improving physique. Lifting weights makes your arms strong, and the connection between learning and cleverness is much looser.

There is a scientific term that specifically refers to this phenomenon of people who are not smart are more confident": the Duck effect (the full name is the Daning-Kruger effect), to take the lead in studying this phenomenon by the two researchers—Cornell University David Dunning (David Dunning) and Justin Kruger (Justin Kruger) named (for related content, see "Vaccine Doubt": Why do ordinary people think they know more than experts?). What inspired them to study this phenomenon was a report about a criminal. The report stated that the criminal robbed the bank after smearing his face with lemon juice because he believed that lemon juice could be used as invisible ink. After reaching the face, it will not be photographed by the camera.

You Come To Taste

Dunning and Kruger asked the subjects to complete a number of tests and asked them to estimate their performance. As a result, an interesting pattern emerged: almost all those who did not perform well thought that they had done a lot better than the actual situation, but in fact, those with good test scores always thought that they did not do well. Dunning and Kruger believe that people with poor intelligence are not only lacking in intellectual ability, but also in the ability to recognize their lack of intelligence. In addition, the self-centered tendency of the brain will also be mixed in, and the possibility of negative opinions about oneself is further suppressed. Moreover, it is necessary to realize that one's own limitations and the excellence of others' abilities are something that requires intelligence. So we see some people confidently argue with others fiercely about things that they have no personal experience, even if the other party has been studying the issue for a lifetime. Our brain can only learn from our own experience, and our basic assumption is that everyone is the same as ourselves. So if I were a fool, I would...

The argument here is that an unwise person cannot actually "perceive" the experience of being very smart. Essentially, it is no different from letting color blindness describe red and green patterns.

"Smart people" may have similar perceptions of the world, but it takes another form. If a smart person thinks something is simple, then they are likely to think other people feel the same way. They use their own level of understanding as the standard, so they feel that their level of intelligence is ordinary (and smart people are usually at the same level in the work circle and social circle, so they are more likely to find a lot of evidence to confirm this).

In addition, smart people generally develop the habit of learning new things and acquiring new knowledge, so they are more likely to realize that they don’t understand everything, knowing that there are many things to learn in various fields, so they draw conclusions and do Don't dare to make such a vow when making a statement.

For example, in the scientific world, you (ideally) will carefully examine the data and information you have obtained before you announce that you have discovered a principle. Being surrounded by equally smart people means that once you make a mistake or make an outrageous assertion, you are likely to be pointed out or asked to give evidence immediately. It is conceivable that you are bound to be very alert to things you don't know or are uncertain about, and this keen awareness often becomes an obstacle in debates or quarrels.

Such situations are very common and cause many problems, but they are obviously not absolute. Not every smart person is full of misgivings, and not every less smart person loves self-praise. There are also many smart people who are really fascinated by the sounds they make, and want to let everyone hear him over and over again; there are also many not so smart people who readily admit that their brain power is limited. There may also be cultural influences. Almost all research behind the Duck effect focuses on Western societies. However, some East Asian cultures show very different behavior patterns. There is an explanation that the (healthier) attitude adopted by East Asian cultures is that lack of understanding means that there is room for improvement, so the performance behaviors they prioritize and adopt are very different from those of the West.

So, is there any brain area behind this phenomenon specifically responsible for it? Is there any part responsible for answering the question "Am I good at what I am doing?" It seems incredible, but maybe it does. In 2009, Howard Rosen and others examined about forty patients with neurodegenerative diseases and found that the accuracy of self-evaluation was comparable to that of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (that is, the prefrontal lobe is close to the middle of the left and right hemispheres, and the lower The size of the site) is related. The study believes that the emotional processing and psychological processes that people need to evaluate their preferences and abilities are inseparable from this area of ​​the prefrontal cortex. Moreover, the results are in line with the current understanding of the role of the prefrontal cortex: the prefrontal cortex is mainly responsible for processing complex information and deriving optimal options and coping responses.

It is worth noting that the study itself is not enough to give a conclusive conclusion, because the data obtained from the experiment with 40 patients as a sample is far from enough to infer whether other people are also the same. However, the ability to accurately evaluate one's own intelligence-metacognitive ability (which can be understood as the cognition of cognition) is worthy of research, because the inability to accurately make self-evaluation has become a prominent feature of dementia. Especially in patients with frontotemporal dementia (mainly problems in the frontal area including the prefrontal cortex), the symptoms of self-evaluation disorders are particularly prominent. They often show difficulty in accurately assessing their own performance in a series of tests, which shows that their ability to self-evaluate and assess performance has been severely impaired. In other types of dementia, that is, dementia caused by damage to other brain regions, we have not seen such a widespread lack of the ability to accurately evaluate their own performance, indicating that a certain area of ​​the frontal lobe is closely related to self-evaluation . This point is also consistent with the previous statement.

It has been suggested that the reason why patients with dementia become grumpy may also have this reason. They have lost the ability to do things, but they cannot understand or realize why this is happening, so they are unavoidably angry. However, even if there is no neurodegenerative disease, the prefrontal cortex is working at full capacity, but that only means that you can conduct self-evaluation, and does not guarantee that your self-evaluation is correct. So there are clowns full of confidence and smart people with less confidence. And the more attention we give to confident people is obviously due to human nature.

Carrots And Sticks-How The Brain Allows Us To Control Others And In Turn Control Others

I am most annoying to buy a car. Walking in the huge car yard, I was exhausted, checking all the details endlessly, and I was totally lost when I saw it. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a horse in my yard! In order to pretend that he knows the car, he has to kick the tires or something. What are you doing? Could the toe of the shoe still analyze the vulcanized rubber?

But personally, the most annoying thing is car sales. It's really hard to deal with: machismo (I haven't met a female salesperson), excessive enthusiasm, "this I have to ask the manager" prevarication, and always suggesting that they are losing money because of me Wait. All kinds of routines disturbed my head and mind, and the whole process made me very painful. So I always take my dad with him, he is very keen on such things. When he accompanied me to buy a car for the first time, I thought that there would be a dashing negotiation. I didn't expect him to curse at the sales and call the criminals until they agreed to lower the price. Although the method is stupid, the effect is not to be said.

Having said that, since all car sales all over the world use those ready-made routines, it can be seen that it works. This is strange. After all, customers have all kinds of personalities, preferences, and attention spans. Isn’t it ridiculous that a person can readily surrender hard-earned money using simple and common methods? However, there are some specific behaviors that can enhance people's compliance (compliance) and make customers obediently "submit to the will of the salesperson."

As mentioned earlier, fear of social judgment can lead to anxiety, provocation can trigger the anger mechanism, and seeking identification can be a strong motivation. Indeed, there are many emotions that can be said to exist only in connection with others: you can get angry with inanimate things, but shame and pride need to be judged by others, and love exists between people (narcissism is completely Is another matter). Therefore, it is not an exaggeration that some people can use their brain's tendency to make others do things according to their wishes. Anyone who earns a living by persuading others to pay has a habitual method of improving customer compliance, which naturally depends on the way the brain works.

It's not that there is any technology that allows you to completely control others. No matter what the pick-up artist wants to instill in you, after all, people are very complex creatures. But no matter what, there are still some scientifically approved methods that can help others do what you want.

For example, the "foot-in-the-door" FITD method (foot-in-the-door) is also called the foot-in-the-door method. A friend asked you to borrow money to take the bus, and you agreed; then, you asked if you could borrow more to buy a sandwich, and you also agreed; then the friend said, why not go to the bar for a drink? Only you can pay, he doesn't get a cent, remember? You think, "No problem, just have a few drinks." After a while, suddenly my friend said to borrow some money to take a taxi, because it was too late to catch the last train. So you sighed and had to agree, after all, you nodded before.

If this so-called friend said at the very beginning, "please ask me to eat and drink and then help me pay to make it easy for me to get home", you would definitely not agree, because this is obviously an unreasonable request. But you actually did everything he asked for. This is the method of taking an inch: first agree to a small request, it will make you more willing to agree to a big request, and the person who makes the request can get an inch.

Fortunately, there are a lot of limitations in the method of getting an inch. There should be some delay between the first request and the second. For example, if someone is willing to lend you 5 yuan, then you can't ask him for 50 yuan after 10 seconds. Studies have shown that the method of taking inches to measure may be effective days to weeks after the initial request is made, but eventually the connection between the two requests will disappear.

If the request is a "pro-social behavior", and the promise of the request will be seen as providing help or doing a good deed, then the effect of applying the method will be better. Inviting people to dinner is to provide help, and lending money to people to go home is also to provide help, so the possibility of being promised is higher. If someone says that he is going to swear words in his ex’s car, please help him on guard, or ask you to drive him to his ex’s residence and throw bricks at the window. Since these are not good things, their request will be rejected. People are usually kinder deep in their hearts!

The method of gaining an inch and a measure also needs to be consistent. For example, borrow a little money first, then borrow more money. Accepting to drive people home does not mean that he is still willing to help take care of his pet boa constrictor in the next month. Is there a relationship between these two things? Most people don't equate get in my car with get a boa constrictor in my house.

In spite of the limitations, the method of taking inches by inches is generally very effective. You may have encountered something like this: a relative asked you to help install the computer, and you turned into 24/7 technical support. What is used here is the method of getting an inch.

In 2002, a study conducted by France's Nicolas Gegan showed that the method of taking inches by one inch also worked on the Internet. Students who are willing to open a particular file as required after receiving the email are also more likely to agree to participate in more troublesome online surveys. Convincing others usually depends on tone, manners, body movements, eye contact, etc. However, Gegan's research shows that the above is not necessary. The brain seems eagerly looking forward to agreeing to other people's requests.

Another way to get others to comply with your wishes is to use rejected demands. For example, someone asks if she can store all her belongings with you because she has to move away from where she lives now. This is too inconvenient, so you refused. Then she asked, how about borrowing your car on weekends so that she can move those things to other places? This is much easier, so you agree. However, it is not convenient to lend a car to others on weekends, but it is slightly better than the initial request. In this way, you agreed to let others use your car—a request you never agreed to casually.

This kind of "door-in-the-face" DITF method (door-in-the-face) is also known as the method of retreat. It sounds like the people who shut the requester out with a "bang" are more fierce, but in fact they are the one being manipulated. Keeping others out (either literally or by extension) makes you feel uncomfortable, so you want to "compensate" by agreeing to some small requests.

The request made using the retreat as the advance method can be more compact than the inch advance method, because since the other party refused from the beginning, it actually did not agree to anything after the first request was made. There is also evidence that the effect of retreat as an advance method is stronger. In 2011, Qu Jiefang of the University of Hong Kong and others conducted a study to persuade several groups of students to do arithmetic examination papers by using the method of taking an inch and taking the method of retreat. The success rate of the method of taking an inch and taking a step was 60%, while the method of taking retreat as the method of progress was 60%. The success rate is close to 90%! The conclusion of this study is that if we want elementary school students to do something, let’s use retreat as an advancement method—of course, this is not the language used to announce to the public.

The effectiveness and reliability of the retreat approach may explain why this approach is often used in financial transactions. Scientists have even directly evaluated its effectiveness: In 2008, Austria’s Webster (Ebster) and Neumayr (Neumayr) conducted a study and found the effect of the Alpine commissary using retreat as a method to sell cheese to passers-by Very good (there are not many experiments to get to the Alpine canteen).

In addition, there is also the "low-ball" method of falsely reporting low prices, which is similar to the method of gaining an inch. It also allows people to agree to a request first, but finally achieves other results.

Specifically, the low ball method first allows you to agree to a certain requirement (such as how much to pay, how much time to spend, how many words to write an article, etc.), and then the other party suddenly raises the previous requirement. Unexpectedly, despite the anger and dissatisfaction, most people will still agree to the upgrade request. If you really want to care about it, of course there are good reasons to refuse, after all, the other party broke the contract for personal gain. But people generally follow the sudden increase in demand, as long as it is not too excessive-if you agree to pay 70 yuan for a second-hand DVD player, the other party's asking price suddenly becomes your life savings plus the first child, then you Certainly not agree.

Using the low ball method can sometimes make people work for you! To some extent. In a study conducted in 2003 by Berg and Cornelius of Santa Clara University in the United States, subjects were asked to complete a survey, and the reward was a free cup of coffee. Participants were then told that there was no free coffee. Although they did not get the promised return, most people still completed the investigation report. A study conducted by Cialdini and his colleagues among college students in 1978 showed that compared with students who were directly required to be there at 7:00, students who had previously agreed to be there at 9:00 were more likely to be there at 7:00. Obviously, rewards or price tags are not the only influencing factors. Many studies on the low ball law have shown that voluntary and proactive agreement to the agreement is an indispensable condition for keeping the promise after changing the requirements.

The above are a few of the more common ways to influence others to make them obey, and there are many other methods that can also induce others to obey their own wishes (another example is "rebellious psychology"-absolutely not allowed to check what it means). Do they have any significance in evolution? It can be considered as "survival of the fittest", but why is susceptibility a useful advantage? Let's put this into the next section, let's talk about how to use the tendency of the brain to explain the above-mentioned compliance techniques.

Compliance is mainly related to self-image. Chapter 4 wrote that the brain has the ability to analyze and recognize itself (through the frontal lobe). Therefore, it is not outrageous to use this information to make some "adjustments" for your failures. You may have heard of "put a seal on your mouth", but why do you have to hold back something? Maybe you think other people's babies are really ugly, but you can't tell the truth, you have to boast "oh, so cute", so that you can make others have a good impression of you, but you won't be honest. This is the so-called "impression management (impression management)", which refers to trying to control the impression that others have on us through social behavior. We care about the opinions of others at the neurological level, and do our best to be liked.

According to a 2014 study by Tom Farrow and others of the University of Sheffield, UK, impression management involves the activation of the medial and left ventrolateral prefrontal lobe, as well as other brain regions such as the midbrain and cerebellum. However, these areas are only significantly active when the subjects deliberately do some annoying behavior in an attempt to leave a bad impression on others. When they decide to make themselves attractive, there is no obvious difference between the above areas and normal activities.

In addition, the subjects tended to be more thoughtless when they made a good impression, and the speed of information processing was much faster than when they wanted to leave a bad impression. Combined with this fact, the researchers believe that leaving a good impression on others is what the brain has been doing! Therefore, to find the brain area responsible for it by scanning is like looking for a tree with nothing special in a dense forest. However, the problem with this study is that the sample is too small, with only 20 subjects, and perhaps some special processing procedures can be found in the future. In any case, the striking fact is that there is a big difference between leaving a good impression and leaving a bad impression.

So, what does this have to do with manipulating others? Put it this way, the brain seems ready to please others. And all the compliance techniques can be said to take advantage of people’s desire to be positive in front of others. This demand is deeply rooted, so it is used by others.

If you agree to a request, then rejecting another similar request is likely to be disappointing and damage others’ impression of you, so the measure-to-measure method works; if you reject a big request, worrying that the other party will dislike you because of it. Just prepare to agree to a small request as a "compensation", so the rejection method works; if you have promised to do or give something, and then ask for a sudden increase, withdrawing the promise will also disappoint people and damage the image, so the low ball method Worked. This is not all because we want others to have a good impression of us, and this desire is so strong that we can’t make better or more rational judgments.

The actual situation is of course more complicated. People’s self-image needs to be consistent, so once the brain makes a certain decision, the difficulty of changing is sometimes beyond imagination—people who have tried to explain that not all foreigners steal things must have a deep understanding of this. . As we said earlier, when what you think in your heart contradicts what you actually do, there will be "dissonance," that is, the pain caused by the mismatch between your thoughts and behavior. The brain's response to this is usually to change its mind to suit the practice and restore harmony.

My friend asked you for money, but you didn't want to give it, but you still gave a small amount of money. If you think this is an unacceptable request, then why do you still do it? You want to be consistent, you want to be liked, so your brain decides that you are really willing to give more money to your friends, and you will have a good time. It can also explain why it is very important to give an active choice when using the low ball method: because the brain has already made a decision, it will persist in order to be consistent, even if the original reason for the decision no longer exists. If you keep your promises, others will rely on you.

In addition, the principle of reciprocity involved is a phenomenon unique to humans (as far as we know it). When others are good to us, we are also good to others, and it is not entirely out of our own interests. If we reject the request of others, and the other party makes a small request, we will feel that the other party has done something good to us and are willing to give back disproportionately. This tendency is considered to be the principle by which the rejection method works: the brain regards "making a request smaller than before" as the other party doing a favor-the brain is really a fool.

In addition, there are reasons for social domination and social control. Some people (perhaps most people?)-at least in Western societies-want to be seen as people with control and/or self-control. The brain feels that this is safer and more advantageous. But dominance and control often manifest themselves in suspicious ways. When someone asks you, they behave respectfully, and you get the upper hand (and be loved) by offering help. The method of gaining an inch into a measure is quite applicable here.

If you refuse the request, then you are exercising control; if the other party makes a smaller request and continue to put yourself in a dominant position, agreeing to the request means that you still have the upper hand and continue to be loved. Make yourself feel good anyway. Here highlights the miraculous effect of retreat as an advance method. And if you decide what you want to do, and then someone changes the conditions, if you go back, it means that the other party has controlled you. Go for it! No matter what, just stick to the original decision, because you are a good person, really. Look, this is the low ball method.

All in all, the brain makes us want to be likable, superior, and consistent. As a result, it has caused us to be used unscrupulously by those who value our money and who have a basic sense of bargaining. Such stupid things can only be done with such complicated organs!

Change The Name Of Rose... Why Smell Is Stronger Than Taste

Everyone knows that the brain uses five senses. In the opinion of neuroscientists, there are more than five senses.

There are some "extra" feelings that we have mentioned before, such as proprioception (feeling the position and movement of the body and limbs), balance (feeling mediated by the inner ear, which can detect gravity and the movement of the body in space), and Appetite, because detecting the level of nutrients in the body and blood is also a feeling. These senses are mainly concerned with the internal state of the human body, while the five "normal" senses are responsible for monitoring and perceiving the external world—the environment around us. Obviously, these five senses refer to: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. In more common terms, they are seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. Each sensation involves complex neural mechanisms, and the brain also uses the information provided by these sensations to make things more complicated. All five senses can be attributed to the exploration of the environment, and the information obtained is converted into electrical signals through the nerves connected to the brain. Coordinating these processes is a big project, and the brain does take a lot of time.

The feelings of the individual can be written, and some people have already written long talks. So, let’s start now with perhaps the strangest sensation-smell. The sense of smell is often underestimated. Strictly speaking, the nose is indeed "below" the eyes. This is really unfortunate. It is very interesting to know the olfactory system of the brain, which is responsible for smelling (or "processing smell perception"). The sense of smell is considered to be the earliest sensation in the evolutionary process. It develops very early and is the first sensation that an embryo develops in the womb. Studies have shown that the developing fetus can feel the smell the mother smells. The odor particles inhaled by the mother enter the amniotic fluid, and the fetus can detect it. In the past, it was thought that humans could distinguish as many as 10,000 smells. This seems to cover a wide range of categories, but this data is based on a study carried out in the 1920s. It is largely theoretical analysis and hypothesis, and has not been carefully verified by experiments.

Fast forward to 2014. Caroline Bushdid and her research team tested the above statement and asked experiment participants to distinguish some chemical mixtures with similar smells. If the human olfactory system can only smell 10,000 kinds of odors, it will not be able to distinguish the difference in mixtures. Surprisingly, the participants completed the task fairly easily. The researchers finally estimated that humans can actually smell about 100 million odors. Such an order of magnitude is generally only used to describe astronomical distances. It is rarely used to describe things as monotonous as the human senses. It is like going to a cabinet to search for a vacuum cleaner and accidentally discovering the dungeon of the Mole Man civilization.

So, how does smell work? We know that smell is transmitted to the brain through the olfactory nerve. There are 12 pairs of cranial nerves that connect the functions of the head to the brain, of which the olfactory nerve ranks first (the optic nerve ranks second). The olfactory neurons that make up the olfactory nerve are special in many aspects. The most notable feature is that they are rare in human neurons that have the ability to regenerate, making the olfactory nerve the Wolverine in the nervous system (the famous "X-Men" series). Because of their ability to regenerate, these neurons in the nose have attracted much attention. Researchers hope to apply their regenerative ability to damaged neurons in other parts, such as the spine of patients with paraplegia.

Olfactory neurons need to be regenerated because they belong to the few sensory neurons that are directly exposed to the "outer" environment, and delicate nerve cells are easily damaged. Olfactory neurons are located in the mucosa above the nasal cavity, and olfactory receptors embedded in the mucosa detect odor particles. After the receptor contacts the corresponding odor molecule, it sends a signal to the olfactory bulb, which is responsible for integrating odor information. There are many types of olfactory receptors. In 1991, Richard Axel and Linda Buck found in their Nobel Prize-winning study that 3% of the genes in the human genome are responsible for encoding different types of olfactory receptors . This result also confirms that the human sense of smell is indeed more complicated than previously thought.

Olfactory neurons detect specific substances (such as cheese molecules, certain sweet ketones, molecules emitted from the mouth of a person who is worried about oral hygiene, etc.) and send electrical signals to the olfactory bulb, which then transmits the information to the olfactory nucleus. Brain areas such as the piriform cortex, so you can feel something.

The relationship between smell and memory is very close. The olfactory system is next to the hippocampus and other major components of the memory system. Because of the close proximity, in fact, early anatomical studies even used it as a memory system. But in fact they are not two separate areas that happen to be next to each other, just like devout vegetarians and butchers have become neighbors. Like the memory processing area, the olfactory bulb also belongs to the limbic system structurally, and has an active connection with the hippocampus and amygdala. As a result, certain scents are closely linked to vivid memories full of emotions. For example, the smell of burning rice will suddenly remind you of the weekend you spent at your grandparents’ house.

You may have experienced a situation like this many times, and a certain smell strongly evokes your childhood memories and/or mood at the time. If you spent a lot of happy time at your grandfather's house when you were young, and your grandfather loves to smoke a pipe, you may have a warm and sad love for the smell of the pipe when you grow up. As part of the limbic system, smell means that there are more direct ways to trigger emotions than other sensations. Perhaps this is why smell often evokes stronger reactions than most other sensations. Seeing a piece of freshly baked bread is nothing special, but its scent is very pleasant and inexplicable, because it evokes pleasant memories related to it, and the end of the memory is always happily delicious. Of course, smell can also have the opposite effect: seeing rotten meat just feels uncomfortable, but smelling rotten meat can make people vomit.

Some people have noticed the powerful ability of smell and the tendency of smell to trigger memories and emotions. There are also many people who want to use this feature to make money: real estate agents, supermarkets, candle manufacturers, and all kinds of people who want to use smell to control emotions, so that people voluntarily take out money. The effect of this method is obvious to all, but the way it works varies from person to person—for example, people who have been food poisoned by vanilla ice cream will not feel at ease when smelling vanilla.

There is another interesting misunderstanding about smell: for a long time, many people feel that smell cannot be "fake". However, several studies have shown that this is not the case. The illusion of smell occurs from time to time, for example, according to the label [marked as "Christmas tree" or "toilet cleaner" and the like-this example is not just nonsense, but from researchers Herz and von Kerry An experiment conducted by Von Clef in 2001] to determine whether a certain smell is pleasant.

In the past, people believed that there was no illusion of smell because the brain obtained too limited information by "smell". Some tests have shown that people can be trained to "track" objects following the smell, but only for preliminary detection. It's almost like smelling a certain smell, and judging the source of the smell nearby based on this, only to the extent of knowing or "not having". So, even if the brain confuses the odor signal and makes you smell something different from the actual smell, how do you know this? The smell may be powerful, but for busy humans, the scope of application is quite limited.

The sense of smell also has hallucinations, that is, smells that do not exist, and its prevalence is worrying. It is often said that they have smelled burnt odors, such as burnt toast, rubber, and hair, or simply "scorched smell". Because this phenomenon is so common, we can even find many webpages dedicated to olfactory hallucinations. Olfactory hallucinations are often related to neurological diseases, such as epilepsy, tumors, or stroke (stroke). Such diseases may cause abnormal activities in the olfactory bulb or olfactory processing system, which makes the brain think that it smells burnt odor. There is also a very useful way to distinguish: the appearance of illusions is that the sensory system is wrong and deceived; the appearance of illusions is a more typical malfunction, which is something wrong in the operation of the brain.

The sense of smell is not always alone. The sense of smell is often classified as a "chemical" sensation because it detects certain chemicals and is activated as a result. Chemosensory speaks of taste. Taste and smell are often used at the same time, and most of the things we eat have obvious smells. The mechanism of the two is also similar, that is, the receptors in the tongue and mouth react to specific chemicals, and most of these chemical molecules are soluble in water (well, saliva). The receptors are concentrated on the taste buds distributed on the surface of the tongue. It is generally believed that there are five types of taste buds, which are salty, sweet, bitter, sour and fresh. The last one reacts to sodium glutamate, which is commonly known as "meat flavor". In fact, there are more than five "types" of taste, such as astringency (such as cranberry), pungency (the taste of ginger), and metallic (you can taste it from...metal).

If the sense of smell is underestimated, then the sense of taste is just the opposite. Taste is the weakest of the main body sensations. Many studies have shown that it is also deeply affected by other factors. For example, you may have seen the wine tasting process: the sommelier takes a sip and announces that it is a 54-year-old Syrah wine, from a vineyard in southwestern France, with some oak The flavors of, nutmeg, citrus and pork (I’m just guessing), the grapes used were stepped on by a 28-year-old young meat who had a wart on his left heel.

Oh, how elegant, how impressive! However, many studies have pointed out that such a precise and sensitive sense of taste has little to do with the tongue, and is mainly related to psychology. The judgments made by professional wine tasters are often contradictory. For the same wine, one said that it is the world's top, and the other with equivalent qualifications believes that it is no different from pool water. Shouldn't everyone praise a good bottle of wine? No, because taste is very unreliable. When faced with several wine samples, the taster could not tell which one is a special vintage or which is a bargain produced on a large scale. To make matters worse, some tests have shown that the taster who received a sample of the red wine to be tested could not tell that he was drinking white wine with food coloring. Obviously, the accuracy of taste may not be too precise.

I solemnly declare here that scientists are not particularly dissatisfied with the tasters, but just want to show that not so many professionals have such a keen sense of taste. This is not to say that the tasters are lying, they can certainly be regarded as experiencing the tastes they claim, but those are mainly from expectations, experience and creative brains, rather than from the taste buds. However, neuroscientists' constant attacks on this field may hardly be recognized by wine tasters.

In fact, tasting is a multi-sensory experience in most cases. After having a stuffy nose due to a cold or other diseases, we often complain about the tastelessness of food. This is because several senses that determine the taste interact, intertwined and mixed, making it difficult for the brain to distinguish. The taste is too weak and will always be affected by other sensations. The one that has the greatest impact on taste is, yes, smell. Most of the taste we taste comes from the smell of food. Some experiments require participants to block their noses and blindfold their eyes (while excluding visual effects). In the case where only taste can be relied on, participants cannot taste the difference between apples, potatoes and onions.

Malika Auvray and Charles Spence pointed out in a paper published in 2007 that when we eat strong-smelling food, although the nose is mainly sending signals, the brain Still tend to think that it is a sense of taste rather than smell. Because most of the sensation when eating is in the mouth, the brain generally infers that all signals come from this, and interprets the signals as taste accordingly. However, the brain has already done a lot of work to produce taste, and it is a bit harsh to blame it for inaccurate inferences. The enlightenment from this part is that even if you are a bad cook, as long as the guests have a bad cold and are willing to sit in a darkened place, you can still successfully host a dinner party.

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