¿Nesquick or Cola-Cao
¿Coca-Cola or Pepsi
¿Burger King or McDonalds
potato omelette ¿with or without onion
Many are the debates that are established in society from time to time in terms of personal tastes or hobbies.
Also around gasoline , one of those first smells that mark us in life when we go with our parents to refuel and we don’t know what it is that smells so much and that for some it is unbearable and for others strangely addictive. Those tastes are determined by our senses. Smell, in this case, is a purely chemical sense. The human nose detects more than a billion odors.
It helps us remember people, moments or places. Do you like the smell of gasoline
You’re not the only one this happens to and there’s a scientific explanation for it.
The reality is that for every person who finds the smell of gasoline pleasant, there are probably just as many who find it nauseating. Of course, those people who like the smell of gasoline like it a lot. The reason is in a ‘magic’ ingredient of gasoline, benzene.Gasoline is a chemical cocktail made up of many ingredients, including de-icers, lubricants, anti-rust agents, and hundreds of chemical compounds known as hydrocarbons. Of all those compounds, benzene is responsible for the gassy smell of gasoline .
Frequent and prolonged inhalation of benzene is not recommended even if it gives us pleasure, as it is a dangerous chemical.
Benzene has a naturally sweet odor to which most noses are particularly sensitive. It is so pungent that the human nose can detect it if there is only one part per million in the air we breathe. It also evaporates quickly, although its smell remains and is not recommended, since it is a dangerous chemical substance. Why is benzene so addictive
There are two main theories:
Gasoline and childhood memories
Our nose can evoke memories lived in the past. From the scientific point of viewsmell is the only sense that does not pass through the thalamus before reaching the forebrain . In addition, the nerve bundle that detects odor molecules, the olfactory bulb, has a high density of connections near the amygdala and hippocampus, which are involved in emotional response and memory formation, respectively.
Perhaps your brain linked the smell of gasoline with happy childhood memories of summer road trips or going out on the speedboat at the beach .
We may have formed a powerful and pleasant memory.that is attached to the smell of gasoline, or specifically, benzene. Perhaps your brain linked the smell of gasoline with happy childhood memories of summer road trips, speedboating on the beach, or spending time in the garage while Mom and Dad fixed some part of the car. When you catch that benzene scent, it can trigger a cozy, nostalgic feeling tied to an outstanding memory.
Gasoline and the brain’s reward pathway
The second theory as to why we like the smell of gasoline focuses more on the physical effect of benzene.on nerve receptors that detect odor. Benzene and other hydrocarbons, when inhaled, have a suppressive effect on the nervous system, resulting in a temporary euphoric feeling.
It produces a pleasurable sensation that is not unlike alcohol or many other drugs. That’s because the biological process of numbing the nerves activates the mesolimbic pathway , also known as the brain’s reward pathway. A key player in the neurobiology of addiction , with which there is a risk that what begins as a child’s grace ends up becoming a health problem, so we must try to avoid inhaling this type of odors voluntarily and continued.