The Power of scent

How our understanding of fragrance has changed. For 50 years Shah Fragrance has been pioneering in the power of scent, on an ongoing odyssey to engage people’s senses and make the world smell better.

Our ability to smell is the most powerful and evocative of all our major senses. When we experience a scent for the first time our brain registers the impression evoked and stores it for years, ready to bring us back to a memorable experience at a moment’s notice. Even those of us working within the flavours and fragrance industry – surrounded by scent every day – experience the jolt of memory caused by a stranger’s perfume.

The power of connecting emotion, memory and scent has been known for a long time but our understanding of it is continuously progressing. For 50 years Shah Fragrance industries has been pioneering in the power of scent, on an ongoing odyssey to engage people’s senses and make the world smell better.

As anyone working in the fragrance field knows, this neural link between scent and memory is caused by the simple fact that the olfactory bulb, which processes smells, has direct connections to the emotion and memory centres of the brain.

“The binding between the receptors in the nose and the odour molecules converts the information from chemical into electrical. It’s a translation from chemical language – the language of the environment – into an electrical one that the brain can understand. And it all starts with a sniff,” says John, Head of Neuroscience Research.

This means that creating fragrances are a fantastic tool for enhancing people’s minds and therefore their lives.

Our understanding of the scientific background to a fragrance’s great power is relatively recent, but humanity has understood scent to be a fundamental tool for generations.