Relevant to our interests

[rydra_wong]

From Wired:

What’s Up With That: Why Are Smells So Difficult to Describe in Words?

A fascinating and readable write-up of the neuroscience and psycholinguistics on this subject.

Sample:

In fact, he thinks it might be the very directness of the connections between olfaction and language in the brain that contributes to our odor-naming difficulties. The information the olfactory system passes on to our language centers is crude and relatively unprocessed, like a few notes scribbled on the back of a napkin. The information sent on from the auditory and visual system, in contrast, is more like a polished draft, having gone through more steps, and presumably more refinement, in specialized sensory regions of the brain.

Comments

[lunabee34]

Thanks for linking. That's a really cool article.

[recessional]

It's an interesting article, but in part the bit you've quoted in particular makes me want to go " . . . really? they are, for normal people?"