Saturday, February 7, 2009

D’oh! ‘Professeur de Parfums’ Flunks Neuroanatomy



Who is Roja Dove? According to his own web site, he is
a vast fountain of fragrance knowledge . . .

the world’s leading fragrance authority . . .
and
the world’s sole “Professeur de Parfums.”
When Marie-Hélène Wagner interviewed the Professeur on the Scented Salamander perfume blog in 2007, he coughed up this howler:
And so the reason I love white blossoms in particular, they contain a
molecule called “indole” and the indolic note also naturally exists in
the animal notes. So because of the way our brain processes odor.
You have the emotional part, the cerebellum, which is
responsible for processing scent, as I’m sure you know
, and
then you have the rational part. So when you smell this scent, the
rational part of your brain smells it as a large bouquet of flowers but
the irrational part, the emotional part picks up on indole and what it
immediately thinks . . . sex.
Well, anyone can fumble his neuroanatomy under intense questioning by a fragrance blogger. But a few months later, Rebecca Howard interviewed His Professorship for the Daily Mail:
. . . according to fragrance expert Dr Roja Dove we should think
much more carefully about what we spray on our bodies as the
way we smell not only influences how we feel but can also have
an effect on the way people percieve [sic] us. ‘Odours are
processed in the cerebellum, by the limbic system
,’
explains Dove.
Sigh. The last time I checked, the limbic system is not in the cerebellum, the cerebellum is not the “emotional part” of the brain, nor is it “responsible for processing scent.”

Luckily for the Professeur’s customers, fragrance consultation isn’t brain surgery.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow the cerebellum seems to confuse so many. Witness the lyrics to The Ramones classic "Teenage Lobotomy":

Lobotomy, lobotomy, lobotomy, lobotomy!
DDT did a job on me
Now I am a real sickie
Guess I'll have to break the news
That I got no mind to lose
All the girls are in love with me
I'm a teenage lobotomy

Slugs and snail are after me
DDT keeps me happy
Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em
That I got no cerebellum
Gonna get my Ph.D.
I'm a teenage lobotomy

ahhh, weren't those the days?

Anonymous said...

Ups...We can go back to Biology I..... high school....

Avery Gilbert said...

Olfacta:

Heh. Makes me wanna be sedated. Last fall I spoke at the National Arts Club in NYC and the tech guy was Monte Melnick, former tour manager of The Ramones; he's written a whole book about those days.

As I put the question mark on the phrenology head I thought of Kinky Friedman & The Ballad of Charles Whitman: "There was a rumor about a tumor, nestled at the base of his brain."

+ Q Perfume:

I wish I had a nickel for every time I had to spell a-m-y-g-d-a-l-a during a magazine interview. I think my next book should be "Functional Neuroanatomy for Beauty Editors."

Anonymous said...

Wow. That is back a ways.

Isn't Kinky Friedman the governor of Texas or somewhere now?

~x~ said...

i'm in intro to psych and haven't even started a proper biology course and found this deeply brilliantly ghey.

thank you.
your commentary added to what was already so amazingly bo-tarded.

i think i might be a professor upon reading this.