A. S. Barwich

By Barbara Kiser Barbara Kiser explores the world of smell through four books—written by an olfaction researcher, a philosopher, a food science writer, and a cultural historian. Review of Smell: A Very Short Introduction By Matthew Cobb Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020, 168 pp. Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind By A. S. Barwich Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020, 384 pp.

A pioneering exploration of olfaction that upsets settled notions of how the brain translates sensory information. Decades of cognition research have shown that external stimuli "spark" neural patterns in particular regions of the brain. This has fostered a view of the brain as a space that we can map: here the brain responds to faces, there it perceives a sensation in your left hand.