Here's your last chance! This is the final week of our Awaken Your Senses Contest and the sense of the week is SMELL!

Today begins the final week in our Awaken Your Senses Contest. The sense of the week is SMELL!

Please add a comment to this post about experiences you have this week or have had in the past related to your sense of smell.

BTW--did you know that your most vivid memories are likely linked to strong smells? Here's why:

Smelling Memories
"Often, the strongest memories of our past are indelibly imprinted into our memory bank through our senses, especially the sense of smell. Here’s why: we use our olfactory sense all the time as we take in currents of air that pass through the nostrils, over the bony turbinates in our nasal passages to a “sheet” about the size of a small postage stamp, which contains five to six million olfactory receptors! There, smells are recognized because each odorant fits into a nerve cell kind of like a lock and key. The nerve cells then send signals along our olfactory nerve to the brain, where the odors are interpreted as “sweet smelling gardenias” or “foul smelling sneakers.” The reason we know the difference is the strong connection between our sense of smell and our memory. According to Dr. Rachel Herz, a psychologist, cognitive neuroscientist, and recognized expert on the psychology of smell, our odor preferences are learned. Herz suggests, “We learn to like and dislike various odors based on the emotional associations we make upon initial encounter with them.” (Awaken Your Senses, Pg. 157, 158)