Rachel Herz Scent of Desire on Reuters

Smells can inspire, arouse -- and drive you mad
By Belinda Goldsmith
Reuters, Monday Oct 8, 2007 8:22am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. Fresh cut grass. Your spouse's natural body odor. Smells can invoke memories, sexually arouse people, or even drive you mad.

Psychology professor Rachel Herz from Brown University in Rhode Island has spent 17 years studying the human sense of smell, finding it is the most emotionally evocative sense and the one most closely tied to mental health and happiness.

In a new book, "The Scent of Desire," she argues Michael Hutchence, frontman of Australian rock band INXS, may have been driven into a deep depression after losing his sense of smell in an accident which may have contributed to his 1997 suicide.

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