Pleasant Odors and the Breath that Organizes Us

How the Olfactory System Shapes Brain–Body Coupling

(Consciousness in First Person • Decolonial Neuroscience • Brain Bee • The Feeling–Knowing Taá)

The Feeling and Knowing Taá — opening a small crack of decolonization

I inhale, and for a brief moment the world becomes simple.
A pleasant smell enters my nostrils, expands through my chest, lowers my shoulders, and softens the tension I didn’t know I was carrying.
Before I think, I feel.
Before I judge, my body reorganizes itself.

In this tiny interval — a breath long, almost invisible — I perceive how olfaction is not “just a sense” but a pathway of regulation, a tuning of the inner world that prepares me for action, calm, vigilance, or connection.

And here, another realization emerges:

I also feel how my words have been colonized — shaped to reduce my body to a mechanical organ, my mind to calculation, my inner life to superstition, my politics to consumption.
This is why so many neuroscientists avoid asking questions that reveal what colonial science cannot name.

But when I let Taá speak — when sensing comes before knowing — I recognize that there is no separation between Neuroscience, Politics, and Spirituality (Utupe, Xapiri, living memory).
Colonization is not only historical; it lives inside the very words that prevent us from existing whole.
Each scientific discovery, when read with courage, becomes a small crack that breaks Zone 3 and returns my body to what it always was: a living territory of possible worlds.

It is in this posture — embodied, decolonial, and awake — that I approach the study by Ghibaudo et al., 2025, published in Scientific Reports:

Ghibaudo, V., Turrel, M., Granget, J., Souilhol, M., Garcia, S., Plailly, J., & Buonviso, N. (2025).
Pleasant odors specifically promote a calming autonomic response and brain–body coupling through respiratory modulation.
(keywords for search: “Ghibaudo 2025 pleasant odors respiratory coupling Scientific Reports olfactory autonomic response”)

What scientific question did the study ask?

The team wanted to understand:

Can pleasant odors calm the autonomic system and align brain–body activity by modulating the breathing cycle?

This is profound, because breathing is one of the oldest regulators of consciousness — not an accessory, but a bridge between physiology and meaning.

How the study was conducted (methods the Brain Bee should understand)

Although this is not an EEG or fNIRS study, it investigates core physiological pathways that directly interact with neural circuits. The methods focused on:

1. Autonomic nervous system monitoring

• Heart rate variability (HRV)
  
  

• Respiratory patterns
  
  

• Vagal–parasympathetic markers
  
  

2. Respiratory entrainment analysis

Breathing rhythms were measured and aligned with odor presentation to examine how smell changes the timing and depth of the respiratory cycle.

3. Brain–body coupling metrics

The team quantified how breathing shifts synchronize with physiological calmness — a kind of internal coherence.

4. Olfactory stimulation

Participants received controlled pleasant and neutral odors while their physiological responses were tracked.

The analysis included multivariate models that identify subtle co-fluctuations between respiration and autonomic signals — the type of approach used today to interpret affective neuroscience and embodied cognition.

What the researchers found

The findings were remarkably consistent:

✔️ Pleasant odors increased parasympathetic activity

Breathing slowed and deepened, HRV increased, and participants entered a calmer state.

✔️ Odor-induced breathing changes synchronized with autonomic regulation

Breathing wasn’t just affected — it organized the physiological shift.

✔️ The olfactory system acted as a “quick-access key” to brain–body integration

A smell could realign internal rhythms faster than cognitive strategies typically do.

This suggests that perception modulates physiology, not the other way around — an insight deeply aligned with our concept of Taá.

Understanding the results through our concepts

Mente Damasiana (Damasio’s embodied consciousness)

A pleasant odor changes interoception directly.
It alters the bodily basis from which consciousness emerges.

Quorum Sensing Humano (QSH)

When people share a smell in a space — a classroom, a clinic, a ritual — their breath rhythms can unintentionally synchronize.
This creates a subtle collective state, making social attunement easier.

Eus Tensionais

Pleasant odors dissolve unnecessary internal tension.
They lighten the Eu Tensonal responsible for vigilance and activate one that supports openness and creativity.

Zona 1 / 2 / 3

• Zone 1: Odors can interrupt automatic stress responses.
  
  

• Zone 2: Pleasant smells guide the body into a soft, creative state where learning and cooperation flourish.
  
  

• Zone 3: Commercial fragrances can also manipulate emotions for consumption — a reminder that sensory regulation can be colonized.
  
  

Yãy hã mĩy (Maxakali)

This ancestral concept of “becoming-with” gains a physical correlate:
an odor can guide the body into a different state of being, allowing imitation-from-within of calmness.

DANA — the intelligence of DNA

Breathing is one of DNA’s oldest regulatory tools.
This study shows how easily environmental cues can re-engage that intelligence.

Where science adjusts our understanding

Before, we used to believe:

It is the brain that calms the body.

The study shows the opposite is often true:

The body reorganizes first — through breath — and consciousness follows.

This overturns colonial models that imagined cognition as control and the body as a subordinate machine.

Implications for education, health, cities, and politics in Latin America

Education

Classrooms could intentionally use non-invasive olfactory cues to create Zone 2 states for learning.

Public health

Breathing-based interventions are low-cost, scalable, and culturally diverse — ideal for LATAM contexts.

Urban planning

Public spaces with natural pleasant smells (vegetation, airflow, humidity) reduce collective tension.

Politics

Understanding how sensory environments modulate collectives helps us design democratic spaces that regulate calm rather than induce agitation.

A subtle Avatars Referenciais insight

When I read this study, I naturally reference the Avatar Olmeca — the one who perceives the world through culture and sensory immersion.
The Olmeca lens reminds me that smell is both biology and cosmology, a way in which cultures across Abya Yala have always regulated mood, ritual, and presence.

Keywords for search engines

Ghibaudo 2025 pleasant odors Scientific Reports respiratory modulation olfactory autonomic coupling brain–body coupling parasympathetic regulation smell breathing neuroscience

When Two Brains Receive the Same World - Cooperation, synchrony, and the shared rhythm of attention

Embodied Singing -Voice, interoception, and Body-Territory in vocal expertise

Pleasant Odors and the Breath that Organizes Us - How smell organizes brain–body coupling

Architecture That Thinks With Me - Turning corners and the attentional cost of built environments

Auditory Approach Bias From Birth - How newborns and adults code the desire to listen

Beta Waves and the Moment I Truly Decide - The prefrontal cortex as the space where "feeling" becomes "choosing"

How My Brain Encodes Voice in Midlife - F0, listening effort, and the vitality of human hearing

Learning Beside Another Brain - Hyperscanning and the pedagogy of co-presence

Reproducibility in fNIRS - When can I trust the hemodynamic curve I see?

HRfunc and the True Shape of the Hemodynamic Response - Why every brain breathes light in its own way

Mixed Reality and Decision-Making - How the brain evaluates prototypes and hybrid worlds

Intense Exercise and the Awakening of Zone 2 - The hemodynamics of effort and the body that generates intelligence

Buttoning a Shirt - Everyday actions as windows into attention, gesture, and consciousness

Depression, tDCS, and the Prefrontal Cortex - Reigniting silent circuits

Designing fNIRS Studies in Real-World Environments - Why science must step outside the laboratory to exist

Transformers and Virtual Short-Channels - AI cleaning brain signals and retelling hemodynamics

Mental Fatigue and Performance - When the head gives up before the body

Cold Water and the Brain - Oxygenation, cold, and the consciousness of the limit

Walking After Stroke - Cognitive–motor interference in everyday life

Balance and the Cerebellum in Parkinson’s Disease - Movement, tensions, and reorganization of the Body-Territory

Freezing of Gait and the Loss of the Body’s Own Quorum - When the body stops trusting the next step

Children With Cochlear Implants - Learning to hear through the brain, not just the device

Emotional Processing in Children With Oppositional Behavior - Regulation, conflict, and the birth of Tensional Selves

Mild Cognitive Impairment - Early hemodynamic signs and presence in the world

Pain, Apathy, and Depression in Dementia - When feeling and thinking stop walking together

Cognitive Load - How much does fNIRS really feel my mental effort?

The Brain in Daily Life -Assisted horsemanship, sport, and embodied enjoyment

Linguistic Jiwasa - When language thinks the world

Dialogical Multiplication and Indigenous Psychology - How to let psychology listen without erasing the Other

The Feeling and Knowing Taá of Christmas 

Republican Capitalism of Spirits without Bodies

NIRS fNIRS EEG ERP Multimodal NIRS-EEG

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