Smelly Politics: Obama #5? Hillarity?

With Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton locked in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination, will one or the other turn to sensory branding, Korean-style? Last December, Reuters reported that Lee Myung-bak, a candidate for the South Korean presidency, was spraying a scent called “Great Korea” at campaign events, and planned to also spray [...]

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Smell the Productivity: Office Aromatherapy

Can some scents reduce stress? Brain scientists are now confirming what herbalists and aroma researchers have long believed. Japanese researchers, using near-infrared spectroscopy, tested the effect of a “pleasant, floral green” aroma on subjects performing a mental arithmetic task and found that stress activity in the subjects’ prefrontal cortex was reduced compared to a control [...]

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The Brut Effect: Cologne Doesn’t Really Make You Smarter

In Brain Rules by John Medina, one of the more amusing anecdotes is an informal experiment by Medina on the potency of scent to enhance the formation of memories. Medina conducted the test while teaching a complex molecular biology topic to two classes. In one class, before each lesson he sprayed Brut cologne on the [...]

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Brain Rules

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina (Pear Press, 320 pages) is a highly readable guide to using the latest neuroscience research to improve your life and work. Medina’s prose never overwhelms the lay reader with jargon but still manages to convey the scientific underpinnings of [...]

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