Communicating what you smell and taste can be a real challenge. It turns out that getting your sense of smell to work with the language center of your brain is an awkward task, and there’s a logical evolutionary explanation.
The earliest humans relied primarily on their sense of smell to obtain information about the environment. As we moved out of caves and into huts, olfaction became less and less important. Dr. Joseph LeDoux, professor of neuroscience at New York University and author of two books on the brain, explains how and why smell has taken a backseat to other senses. “As primates went from ground dwellers to tree dwellers, smell became less important and vision, especially color vision, became more important. The relative amount of the brain devoted to olfaction was reduced while the amount devoted to vision has vastly increased.”
As language and other higher functions emerged, brain real estate continued to morph. However, it seems the ever-shrinking sector for smell remained relatively isolated from the areas responsible for forming words. According to Dr. Richard Robertson, professor of neurobiology at the University of California, Irvine, “The brain systems that handle language were formed many millions of years after those that control olfaction, and there are relatively few connections between the parts of the brain that process smell and those that control language.” This probable theory makes perfect sense; it’s why you can smell something familiar but still have such a tough time naming it. So don’t sweat it if you don’t smell wild truffles and roasted suckling pig in your wine when your neighbor does—they’ve probably just been practicing a little longer.
