News
March 31, 2026
Close your eyes. Take a breath. Before you can name what you’re smelling – before your brain reaches for words like floral, fresh, or woody – something else happens first: an emotional response is triggered.
A scent can calm you. Energize you. Pull you back into a memory you didn’t know you were carrying. That’s because unlike your other senses, smell takes a shortcut to emotion: tiny molecules in the air activate olfactive receptors in your nose, sending signals straight to the brain’s limbic system, the area responsible for emotion and memory.
Compared to sight or sound, smell has a very direct link to the limbic system. This makes olfaction the only sensory system with such privileged access to the brain's emotion and memory centers. One particular smell can take you back to your childhood, to a very special moment in your life, to a better place.
We probably know more about the planet mars than the world of smell
The delights of perfume were known to ancient civilizations: in Egypt, perfumed oils and incense were closely associated with health, worship, and well‑being in daily life. But despite centuries of research and discovery, our understanding of the mechanisms of olfaction is still limited.
At dsm-firmenich, our scientists are on an exciting mission: to decode what happens in our body and brain when we smell. Sounds simple, but it’s a vast area of research and exploration, where we combine leading-edge neuroscience, biotechnology, receptor biology, data science, and so many other science disciplines.
For over three decades, our Science & Research teams have worked alongside leading academic institutions to build a strong expertise in olfactory perception and neuroscience, studying how scent can elicit emotion, memory, and behavior. This includes a 20-year partnership with experts in neuroscience from the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences at the University of Geneva.
Curious what this research might look in practice? Let’s take a look:
“Fragrance speaks to us before we even have time to think. It goes straight to feeling. As a perfumer, I’m always aware that a scent can instantly bring comfort, connection, or a sense of well-being. Creating a fragrance means shaping those invisible emotions, and neuroscience, by understanding how everything is connected, helps us with that.”
The perfume of the future: from ‘smelling good’ to ‘feeling great’
What does this mean for our teams working in fragrances? It means perfumes are no longer about ‘just’ smelling good. It’s about how it makes you feel. Whether that means happiness, relaxation, excitement, or evoking memories.
“We are entering a new era of perfumery, where creativity and neuroscience walk hand in hand. For me, this means creating with intention and purpose — shaping scents that can uplift, comfort, connect, or make us feel at ease.
A fragrance is no longer only about how it smells, but about how it makes you feel, and how it can positively touch everyday life.”
This is why we developed our emotiOn™ program. With this program, we translate decades of research into guidance - not by creating formulas, but by mapping out emotional response patterns and revealing how specific scents interact with the brain. These can then be used in perfumers’ creations, for example, with an innovative solution that enhances focus.
Wait, adding emotions in a bottle? Yes, that’s what we do!
A perfumer’s job is to create: selecting, balancing, and combining ingredients into a fragrance that feels expressive and alive. But composition isn’t just about blending ingredients together. Perfumers must anticipate how a scent will make us feel. Therefore, in addition, we add a so-called ‘secret’ ingredient. And that secret ‘ingredient’ is… data!
Our emotiOn™ program is built on a solid foundation of over 30 years of neuroscience research by world‑renowned academic partners; more than 50 scientific publications on olfaction, emotion, and cognition; and an industry-leading database of consumer-tested fragrances. This treasure trove of data, combined with AI‑driven fragrance creation and tailor-made behavioral and neurophysiological methodologies, allows us to reveal emotional connections and translate science into creative guidance.
Understanding emotion requires more than words alone. That’s why we take a multi-layered approach with our research: combining self-reported feedback with insights from the brain and body, and cutting-edge data science to uncover how fragrance is truly experienced.
“What people say they feel about a fragrance is only part of the story. We also have to look at what’s going on in the brain and the body: in other words, what they feel before they find the words. The truth lies between the conscious and the unconscious: the verbal and the instinctive. That’s the magic of fragrance and what we’re trying to uncover.”
One example of this research in practice is kronoscent™, our neuroscience-based validation tool. Designed to be used in real-life conditions outside of the lab, kronoscent™ measures implicit reaction times to uncover unconscious emotional connections with a fragrance - revealing what people truly feel, beyond what they are able to say.
And through our emotiOn™ program, we scale these insights, validated by kronoscent™, with proprietary AI modelling, trained on 40,000+ fragrance tests and over a million consumer responses worldwide.
When this research reaches the perfume bottle, it changes the landscape for consumers: we’re redefining how people experience fragrance and, in turn, how they choose scents that resonate with them.
One example is our partnership with The Nue Co. Their ‘Nostalgia Collection’ is designed to soothe the nervous system and evoke comfort, using our emotiOn™ patented neuroscience technology to tap into different parts of the brain. The result is a trio of nostalgia-inspired functional fragrances that feel comforting, grounding and emotionally transportive - and, of course, smell incredible too.
By understanding how scents connect with emotions, our perfumers can create fragrances that truly move us – and redefine the future of perfumery.
Progress you can feel? We’ve got you
As our understanding of scent deepens, so does our ability to design fragrances that truly support people in their everyday lives. Consumers continue to inspire what comes next, as we move toward more holistic fragrance solutions: designed to uplift, calm, energize, or comfort, in the moments that matter most.
So next time you light a candle, spray a perfume, enjoy a nice shower, or open your laundry, take a moment… your emotions will have already responded.
Because this is no longer just fragrance in a bottle. It’s emotion.
Learn more about our emotiOn™ program, here.