MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter Spring 2019

82 MLCM WINTER/SPRING 2019 words :: Carmen Kuntz A picture may say a thousand words, but a taste can take you back in time and around the world. The spicy zing of curried lentils can transport you to lunch in a Nepali mountain hut, while the sweet, piney juice of a mango may teleport you to that surf trip in South America. Similarly, scents can be strongly associated with memories—a waft of frying onions might kick you right back to perogy night in grandma’s kitchen, or the sharp scent of cedar might take you to that first camping trip in the Coast Mountains. These instant, powerful, mental connections can catch you off guard but the ability to associate a taste or smell with a positive or negative consequence is a fundamental skill for survival relied on by everything from invertebrates to humans since the dawn of time. The ability to identify poisonous food or detect smells that represent danger helps keep us alive. The olfactory process—which refers to the combination of smell and taste—occurs within milliseconds, and has been proven to be stronger than the sense of sight when it comes to providing an intimate connection to memories and emotions. One of the main differences between sight and olfactory senses is that taste and smell work together, creating a kind of super-sense. “Taste is basically smell,” says Dr. Simon Chu, a contemporary cognitive psychologist and expert on odour-evoked memory recall. “The range of flavours we taste are essentially due to the odours.” This is why having a cold and stuffy nose decreases how you perceive flavours. Taste and smell are processed in a similar way, both sending molecules to olfactory nerve endings in the nose which send a message to the cranial nerve and gustatory cortex where they combine to create a sensation. Examining a photo from a long-ago adventure provides a cue to pull a memory from hippocampus or amygdala, areas of the brain where long- term, episodic or emotional memories are stored. But this visual aid is a crutch, assisting the recall of just a specific memory. “The quality of the memories that are triggered by sights or sounds are different simply because regular memories are more effortful to retrieve,” says Dr. Chu. “Show someone a picture of a cup of Mongolian tea, they’ll say that they remember having aromatic tea in a Mongolian tea house five years ago, but retrieving the memory might take effort. TIME TRAVEL WITH TASTE BUDS The taste of adventure stays with us long after the trip is over. FOOD Can you smell what Phil Johnson is cookin'? COLIN DWATT