Discovering Scent

A smell is a powerful thing. It can scare you away from milk that's too old, it warn you of a fire, it can make you smile as you touch a t-shirt that has your boyfriend's smell. A smell is a powerful thing.

Noah never had a sense of smell. There have been a lot of theories on the matter, from genetics (his dad has smelling difficulties, too) to birth trauma. Whatever the cause, there seemed to be little we could do about it. A neurologist once said, "Oh, that's interesting," and left it at that. Um, thanks for the helpful input, doctor.

A strange thing happened, though, when Noah and I were working on his science fair project a few months ago. We were using this heavy-duty, kill-your-brain-cells kind of glue to put fins on his little rockets, and, it took about twenty minutes or so for him to process anything, but finally, out of the blue, Noah said, "What's that smell!!??" as he clutched his nose in horror. He smelled the glue!

He didn't have any other smell responses, though . . . that is, until the past couple weeks.

Within the past two weeks, Noah has been grossed out by the smell of coffee, gasoline, and my nail polish. And then, today . . .

I was vacuuming, as I do at least twice a day to keep up with the damage the boys do to the living room, and I happened to use some vanilla-scented carpet sprinkles this time. Noah stopped me mid-vacuum. "Does that have a smell?" he asked.

"Yes . . . can you smell it?"

"I can! That smells gooo-ood!" he beamed.

My child can smell. The only thing I can figure is that a year of sensory integration therapy is having an impact. I'm glad, for safety reasons, that he can now smell noxious things and get away from danger. But my heart is even more glad that he smelled a beautiful thing for the first time today. I love that my son will someday be able to smell a perfume in a crowd and be reminded of his girlfriend's scent, or smell cookies baking and be able to anticipate tasting them. I love that my son can smell.

Diss research makes me teary-eyed

So I'm writing this diss chapter on pedagogy, advocating for practices in the writing classroom that embrace neurodiversity. I was dealing with research on the writing practices of students on the autism spectrum, supposed-experts arguing that because of the "mindblindness" of people with autism, they are oblivious to the perspectives of others and therefore do not appeal to audiences or include background information or transitions. I, of course, wasn't happy with the over-simplification of mindblindness, so I looked further.

I found compelling research that indicated that rather than mindblindness, people with autism are overly sensitive to the world around them . . . so much so that at times they have to shut down just to survive. Neuroscientists Henry Markham, Tanis Rinaldi, and Kamila Markram call this Intense World Syndrome.

Strings of articles led me to research on the limbic system and the amygdala. This is the area of the brain responsible for memory, emotion, and fear. Oh, and smell. (Odd combination, it seems, but ever notice how smells trigger memories? I suppose that in earlier stages of our evolution this was important for finding a mate . . . so memory, emotion, and smell do fit together if you think about it.)

People with autism have amygdalas in overdrive, hyperactive compared to a typical person. Memory, emotion, and fear . . . intensified. Imagine remembering everything and feeling the emotions and fears related to those experiences far more intensely than a typical person would. It's not just that people with autism remember a lot, which they do. The way memory modulation works in our brains is that emotional arousal solidifies our remembering of an event. The greater the emotions, the more we remember something. Thus someone like Daniel Tammet can remember pi up to the 22,514th digit because he has an emotional attachment to every single number.

But . . . think of all the things that suck in life. The dog that barked and scared you. The seatbelt that was too hot and burned your hand when you tried to fasten it. The teasing you encountered on the playground. Imagine feeling all of the negative emotions and fears related to these daily sucky experiences a thousand-fold. Wouldn't you be walking the world in fear that all of these horrible things might happen again?

The amygdala is also the area of the brain that triggers our fear responses. Like immobility and freezing. Like fight or flight.

That emotional shutting down we think we see sometimes in people with autism--that immobility is a fear response. The fighting meltdowns we sometimes see in people with autism--that fight or flight is a fear response.

My god, my children live in fear, I realized. My heart hurt for them and my eyes filled with tears as I put the neurological pieces together.

No wonder routine is so important to Nick--he's probably afraid that he'll encounter negative experiences that trigger so much emotion and fear, and staying to routines reduces the chances of that happening.

No wonder Noah is a walking extreme of emotion--loving so tenderly, laughing so loudly and joyfully, hurting so incredibly. Like his brother, he has an over-active amygdala.

And . . .

All this research finally put one piece together that doctors have always scratched their heads at. Noah can't smell. When I asked why, the best I ever got from a doctor was a shoulder shrug (although an OT suggested it was caused by birth trauma). But here I found this one little area of the brain that explains everything. My boys obviously have amygdalas that function atypically--and this is the area where we process smell. It makes perfect sense that if this area of his brain is affected by something that his sense of smell would be affected too.