TIL. I’ve heard a similar thing about certain smells being closely tied with the memory centre in the brain.
mat@jlai.lu 5 days ago
It is more about signal leakage between neurones. The optical nerve is closed to the one controlling sneezing so when the optical is highly excited, it can activate the sneezing nerve.
Source : I have a friend with this and he looked it up once
Talonflame@lemmy.cafe 5 days ago
ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Out of all of our senses, smell is the one that triggers memory the quickest. The olfactory nerves in your nose are extremely sensitive and have a direct line to the long term memory part of the brain
voracitude@lemmy.world 5 days ago
That’s the prevailing theory, yes, but as far as I’ve found there’s not empirical evidence to back it up. The theory does make perfect sense to me, though!
Also, as a sufferer, I’ve noticed it almost always requires sunlight or something with close to the same frequencies. Most artificial lights don’t trigger it.
KingOfSleep@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Artificial lights absolutely trigger it for me. They just have to be bright.
abbadon420@lemm.ee 4 days ago
“Bright” is kind of a spectrum though. Sometimes a light is just bright enough that you can trigger a sneeze, but only if you focus on it. Other times that same light will almost trigger a sneeze with focus, but not go completely over the edge. That’s a very annoying feeling when that happens.
voracitude@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Interesting! I’ll update my post, it makes sense there would likely be variability in how it presents due to biology. My experience isn’t necessarily the default.