Smell and Taste - The senses in our nose and mouth

Smell and taste are the two senses that sample our environment for information using chemical stimuli.

We can distinguish up to 10,000 different smells although we are mostly not consciously aware of their influence on our daily life. Our sense of smell warns us of potential dangers, such as bad food or smoke, and it can influence our mood, emotions, social interactions, memory and our immune system. Even during sleep our brain continues to process smells and the quality and emotional tone of our dreams can be influenced by having different smells in the room. Memories are often strongly associated with certain smells and our sense of smell can be used to improve memory and recall. Complete loss of the sense of smell can lead to depression, while over-sensitivity to certain smells can affect attention, concentration and eating habits.

We can only distinguish five different tastes - sweet, salt, bitter, sour and umami - and these combined with our sense of smell give us our appetite, our experience of flavour and protection from poisons.

Although strictly speaking a tactile sensation, the sense of texture and temperature in the mouth can play an important role in the overall appetite and flavour experience. Many specific eating preferences are not just a smell and taste issue, but also involve texture, temperature and sometimes the sound of food being chewed. A preference for specific tastes or certain textures such as very smooth or only crunchy are indicators of over-sensitivity in these areas.

The five senses – hearing, vision, touch, smell and taste – plus our sense of balance and where our body is in the space around us (proprioception) all contribute to how we learn and develop. How the brain receives, filters, processes and interprets the signals from these senses determines how we perceive reality and how we react, behave and express ourselves. The SAS methods are specifically designed to strengthen sensory processing and improve inter-hemispheric synchronisation and communication. The structured training and coaching programmes improve speech & pronunciation, reading & writing, attention & understanding and lead to better behavioural, social and emotional expression.

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