A recent study has demonstrated that continuous exposure to rose essential oil through inhalation can lead to measurable increases in gray matter volume in the human brain.
In this randomized controlled intervention, 50 healthy women participated: 28 in the experimental group applied rose essential oil to their clothing daily for one month, while 22 in the control group used plain water. Before and after the period, researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to assess changes in brain structure. The results indicated a significant increase in gray matter volume (GMV) across the whole brain, with a particularly notable effect in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a region involved in memory processing, self-referential thinking, and emotional regulation. No significant changes occurred in areas like the amygdala or orbitofrontal cortex.
The olfactory pathway likely explains this effect: aromatic compounds from the rose oil travel directly to the limbic system, providing sustained stimulation that may promote neuroplasticity and help counteract age-related brain atrophy. The authors suggest this could have implications for dementia prevention, as the PCC is among the regions affected early in conditions like Alzheimer's disease.
This appears to be the first evidence that prolonged scent inhalation can induce structural changes in the adult human brain.
[Kokubun, K., et al. (2024). Continuous inhalation of essential oil increases gray matter volume. Brain Research Bulletin, 208, 110896. DOI: 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2024.110896]
Nobody has ever made the dark feel as real as old Disney did.
In these films the night isn't an absence of light. It's a color, and someone mixed it by hand…
Disney had its own paint laboratory, built by a woman named Mary Weiser, the first of its kind in animation. Its job was to invent shades that did not exist yet. In the early thirties, when the studio was still making shorts, there were around eighty shades on the shelves. By the time they finished Snow White there were fifteen hundred.
Every one of them went on by hand, cel by cel, and each cel needed hours to dry before it could be photographed.
The Ink and Paint department was almost entirely women. According to the Walt Disney Family Museum, the paints were sometimes named after them, and to have a color carry your name was considered an honour.
So the dark of Bambi's forest, the lamplight in Geppetto's workshop, the blue at Cinderella's attic window: none of it is a filter or a setting or a dimmer turned down. Each is a specific colour that a specific person mixed in a jar, and some of those jars had her name on the label.
That is why these scenes still feel more alive than anything made since. We went from hands, to computers, to AI, and at every step there is a little less of the person left in it…
The author Joanna Maciejewska said it better than anyone: "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes."
Curiosity is stronger than love.
A reporter asked him, “How so?”
“I’m 94 years old, and I got married at 23.
But at 46, my wife left me.
She told me that she had become invisible now…
that I was working too much and I wasn’t paying enough attention to her anymore.
I told her that it wasn’t possible, that I loved her more than everything, and it was true but…
that’s when she asked me:
do you know when was the last time you came to see me play bridge?
I didn’t know how to answer, and she said…
‘It’s normal. You never came.’
And she left.
So I made a decision…
In the months that followed, I signed up for bridge lessons and…
I learned how to play, I practiced, I researched, and one day…
I saw there was going to be a tournament near our home. So I signed up and…
She was in the other team. I was seeing her for the first time in nearly a year…
Of course, she beat me.
But I saw a feeling in her eyes that I hadn’t seen for a long time.
Gratitude.
So at the end, I went to see her and I told her…
‘If you agree to give me a second chance, I’ll never miss any of your competitions again.’
I kept my word.
She passed away 8 years ago but…
She taught me the most precious of the lessons:
“Love isn’t enough, you have to know how to show it.”