system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does scent processing work? Specifically, if I become “nose blind” to something (say a strong air freshener), will it still help mask another strong odor entering the space?
gpt
Nose blindness is just the process of habituation, meaning your brain no longer chooses to acknowledge a stimulus because of its constant presence and instead uses its resources to detect novel stimuli. This happens with all of our senses. It's why you can't taste the inside of your mouth and why you don't notice that you can in fact see your own nose. It's more important for survival that you can notice something novel rather than wasting time noticing something that is always there and therefore probably not a threat to you. So because a new/stronger odor is a new stimulus your brain would notice that it is new and could be threatening and therefore more important that you know it's there.