Our sense of smell changes the colours we see

New Delhi: Unconscious associations with our sense of smell or odour can even affect our perception of colours, finds a new study. The researchers now emphasise the need to investigate how far-reaching such “crossmodal” associations between odours and colours are.

“Here we show that the presence of different odours influences how humans perceive colour,” said lead author Dr Ryan Ward, a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, UK.

One way our brain makes sense of an abundance of information is by combining information from two or more senses, such as between smells and the smoothness of textures, pitch, colour, and musical dimensions.

This sensory integration also causes us to associate higher temperatures with warmer colours, lower sound pitches with less elevated positions, and colours with the flavuor of particular foods – for example, the taste of oranges with the colour of the same name. Now, a study in Frontiers in Psychology has shown experimentally that such unconscious ‘crossmodal’ associations with our sense of smell can affect our perception of colours. Ward and colleagues tested for the existence and strength of odour-coloor associations in 24 adult women and men between 20 and 57 years of age.