Follow your nose Reading Answers

Gayathri Author

Author

19-09-2025

Follow your nose reading answers

In this article, we have provided Follow your nose reading answers below. It contains 13 questions in which 5 questions are from Matching Headings form, 6 questions are from Matching Features form and 2 questions are from Multiple Choice Questions. Skim the section to find the major concepts, comprehend the layout of the text, underline keywords and prominent elements, and try to understand what the passage is about. This is critical for the Reading Section. This article will help the students to sharpen their comprehension skills and perform well the IELTS Reading test.

Table of contents:

Solution for Follow your nose

The following table comprises of Follow your nose reading answers. You may cross-check your answers.

Answer Table

14. IX 18. VI 22. B 26. B
15. III 19. B 23. C  
16. II 20. A 24. A  
17. VII 21. D 25. C  

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The applicants must attempt all the questions to complete the Follow your nose Reading Answers. IELTS candidates who consistently prepare could achieve the 7+ band score in reading section. To perform well in the Reading Module, you must understand how to approach and answer the various question types which is included here.

Passage

We have provided a The follow your nose reading passage below, read it carefully and answer the questions 14-26. Make sure to check the Follow your nose reading answers with location. 

Follow your nose

  1. Aromatherapy is the most widely used complementary therapy in the National Health Service, and doctors use it most often for treating dementia. For elderly patients who have difficulty interacting verbally, and to whom conventional medicine has little to offer, aromatherapy can bring benefits in terms of better sleep, improved motivation, and less disturbed behaviour. So the thinking goes. But last year, a systematic review of health care databases found almost no evidence that aromatherapy is effective in the treatment of dementia. Other findings suggest that aromatherapy works only if you believe it will. In fact, the only research that has unequivocally shown it to have an effect has been carried out on animals.
  2. Behavioural studies have consistently shown that odours elicit emotional memories far more readily than other sensory cues. And earlier this year, Rachel Herz, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and colleagues peered into people's heads using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to corroborate that. They scanned the brains of five women while they either looked at a photo of a bottle of perfume that evoked a pleasant memory for them, or smelled that perfume. One woman, for instance, remembered how as a child living in Paris-she would watch with excitement as her mother dressed to go out and sprayed herself with that perfume. The women themselves described the perfume as far more evocative than the photo, and Herz and co-workers found that the scent did indeed activate the amygdala and other brain regions associated with emotion processing far more strongly than the photograph. But the interesting thing was that the memory itself was no better recalled by the odour than by the picture. "People don't remember any more detail or with any more clarity when the memory is recalled with an odour," she says. "However, with the odour, you have this intense emotional feeling that's really visceral."
  3. That's hardly surprising, Herz thinks, given how the brain has evolved. "The way I like to think about it is that emotion and olfaction are essentially the same things,” she says. “The part of the brain that controls emotion literally grew out of the part of the brain that controls smell.” That, she says, probably explains why memories for odours that are associated with intense emotions are so strongly entrenched in us, because the smell was initially a survival skill: a signal to approach or to avoid.
  4. Eric Vermetten, a psychiatrist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, says that doctors have long known about the potential of smells to act as traumatic reminders, but the evidence has been largely anecdotal. Last year, he and others set out to document it by describing three cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in which patients reported either that a certain smell triggered their flashbacks, or that smell was a feature of the flashback itself. The researchers concluded that odours could be made use of in exposure therapy, or for reconditioning patients' fear responses
  5. After Vermetten presented his findings at a conference, doctors in the audience told him how they had turned this association around and put it to good use. PTSD patients often undergo group therapy, but the therapy itself can expose them to traumatic reminders. "Some clinicians put a strip of vanilla or a strong, pleasant, everyday odorant such as coffee under their patients' noses, so that they have this continuous olfactory stimulation,” says Vermetten. So armed, the patients seem to be better protected against flashbacks. It's purely anecdotal, and nobody knows what's happening in the brain, says Vermetten, but it's possible that the neural pathways by which the odour elicits the pleasant, everyday memory override the fear-conditioned neural pathways that respond to verbal cues.
  6. According to Herz, the therapeutic potential of odours could lie in their very unreliability. She has shown with her perfume-bottle experiment that they don't guarantee any better recall, even if the memories they elicit feel more real. And there's plenty of research to show that our noses can be tricked, because being predominantly visual and verbal creatures, we put more faith in those other modalities. In 2001, for instance, Gil Morrot, of the National Institute for Agronomic Research in Montpellier, tricked 54 oenology students by secretly colouring a white wine with an odourless red dye just before they were asked to describe the odours of a range of red and white wines. The students described the coloured wine using terms typically reserved for red wines. What's more, just like experts, they used terms alluding to the wine's redness and darkness-visual rather than olfactory qualities. Smell, the researchers concluded, cannot be separated from the other senses.
  7. Last July, Jay Gottfried and Ray Dolan of the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience in London took that research a step further when they tested people's response times in naming an odour, either when presented with an image that was associated with the odour or one that was not. So, they asked them to sniff vanilla and simultaneously showed them either a picture of ice cream or of cheese, while scanning their brains in a fMRI machine. People named the smells faster when the picture showed something semantically related to them, and when that happened, a structure called the hippocampus was strongly activated. The researchers' interpretation was that the hippocampus plays a role in integrating information from the senses - information that the brain then uses to decide what it is perceiving.

Questions

Questions 14-18

Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G
Choose the correct heading for paragraph A, C-E and G from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-ix in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
1. Paragraph A

Example      Answer
14. Paragraph B     iv

15. Paragraph C
16. Paragraph D
17. Paragraph E

Example      Answer
Paragraph F     v

18. Daragraph G

List of Headings
i Remembering the past more clearly
ii Bringing back painful memories
iii Originally an alarm signal
ivThe physical effects of scent versus image
v Checking unreliable evidence
vi Reinforcing one sense with another
vii Protection against reliving the past
viii The overriding power of sight and sound
ix Conflicting views

Questions 19-24

Look at the following findings (Questions 19-24) and the list of researchers
Match each finding with the correct researcher, A-D.
Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 19-24 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

19 Smell can trigger images of horrible events.
20 Memory cannot get sharper by smell.
21 When people are given an odour and a picture of something to learn, they will respond more quickly in naming the smell because the stimulus is stronger when two or more senses are involved.
22 Pleasant smells counteract unpleasant recollections.
23 It is impossible to isolate smell from visual cues.
24 The part of brain that governs emotion is more stimulated by smell than an image.

A Rachel Hertz
B Eric Vermetten
C Gil Morrot
D Jay Gottfried and Ray Dolan

Questions 25-26

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 25-26 on your answer sheet.

25 In the article, what is the opinion about the conventional method of aromatherapy?
A Aromatherapy is the use of essential oils extracted from plants.
B Evidence has proved that aromatherapy is effective in treating dementia.
C People who feel aromatherapy is effective to believe it is useful.
D Aromatherapy is especially helpful for elderly patients.

26 What is Rachel Hertz's conclusion?
A The area of the brain which activates emotion has the same physiological structure as
the part controlling olfaction.
B We cannot depend on smell, and people have more confidence insight and spoken or
written words.
C Odours can recall real memories even after the perfume-bottle experiment.
D Smell has proved its therapeutic effect over a long time span.

Answers for Follow your nose with Explanations

The Follow your nose reading answers with Explanations are given below. It will assist you in understanding how to give the appropriate answers for reading section and will allow you to correct your errors.

14. Answer: IX
Explanation: Aromatherapy can help older people who struggle to communicate verbally and for whom traditional medicine has nothing to give sleep better, be more motivated, and behave less erratically. So one may suppose. However, a thorough analysis of medical database information conducted last year revealed practically little proof that aromatherapy is efficient in treating dementia. According to other research, aromatherapy only has an effect if you think it would. In reality, only animal-based research has conclusively demonstrated that it has an impact.

15. Answer: III
Explanation: According to paragraph C, "The area of the brain that regulates emotion literally developed from the area that regulates smell." She argues that this likely explains why memories of smells that evoke powerful emotions are so deeply ingrained in humans, as the scent was originally a survival strategy: a signal to approach or to avoid.

16. Answer: II
Explanation: According to paragraph D, The researchers came to the conclusion that odors may be used in exposure treatment or for retraining patients' aversive reactions.

17. Answer: VII
Explanation: According to paragraph E, For constant olfactory stimulation, some physicians place a strip of vanilla or a strong, pleasant, daily odorant like coffee under their patients' noses, according to Vermetten. The patients appear to be more shielded against flashbacks thanks to their weapons.

18. Answer: VI

Explanation: According to paragraph G, According to the researchers' opinion, the hippocampus is involved in integrating sensory information, which the brain utilizes to determine what it is seeing.

19. Answer: B

Explanation: According to paragraph D, a psychiatrist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands named Eric Vermetten claims that although doctors have long been aware of the possibility that odors might serve as painful flashbacks, the data has primarily been anecdotal. By presenting three PTSD cases in which patients said that either a specific fragrance prompted their flashbacks or that smell was a characteristic of the flashback itself, he and others set out to document it last year. The researchers came to the conclusion that odors may be used in exposure treatment or for retraining patients' aversive reactions.

20. Answer: A
Explanation: According to paragraph B, Herz and colleagues discovered that the smell significantly increased the amygdala's and other brain areas involved in emotion processing over the image. The curious thing, though, was that neither the smell nor the image did a better job of recalling the experience itself. "People don't remember any more detail or with any more clarity when the memory is recalled with an odour," claims the author. But with the smell, you get this incredibly visceral, deep emotional experience.

21. Answer: D
Explanation: According to paragraph G, A component known as the hippocampus was substantially active when people named the odors faster when the picture displayed something semantically relevant to them. According to the researchers' opinion, the hippocampus is involved in integrating sensory information, which the brain utilizes to determine what it is seeing.

22. Answer: B
Explanation: For constant olfactory stimulation, some physicians place a strip of vanilla or a strong, pleasant, daily odorant like coffee under their patients' noses, according to Vermetten. The patients appear to be more shielded against flashbacks thanks to their weapons.

23. Answer: C
Explanation: In order to fool 54 oenology students into describing the aromas of a variety of red and white wines, Gil Morrot of the National Institute for Agronomic Research in Montpellier colored a white wine in secret with an odorless crimson dye. The phrases the students used to describe the colored wine were usually used to describe red wines. Furthermore, they referred to the wine's crimson and darkness—visual as opposed to olfactory characteristics—just like professionals did. The researchers came to the conclusion that smell cannot be distinguished from other senses.

24. Answer: A
Explanation: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used by Herz and colleagues at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, to peep into peoples' minds in order to confirm that. Five women either viewed a snapshot of a perfume bottle that brought back happy memories for them or smelled the scent as their brains were being scanned. For instance, one woman recalled how, when she was a young girl growing up in Paris, she used to watch with interest as her mother got ready for the day and put that perfume on herself. The ladies said that the fragrance was much more evocative than the image, and Herz and colleagues discovered that the aroma did, in fact, far more powerfully trigger the amygdala and other brain areas involved in emotion processing than the image.

25. Answer: C
Explanation: Aromatherapy can help older people who struggle to communicate verbally and for whom traditional medicine has nothing to give sleep better, be more motivated, and behave less erratically. So one may suppose.

26. Answer: B
Explanation: Herz thinks that the therapeutic value of odors may reside in their inherent unreliability. Even while the memories they evoke feel more genuine, she has demonstrated with her perfume-bottle experiment that they do not guarantee any improved memory. Being primarily visual and verbal animals, we place more trust in those other modalities, and there is much data to support this claim.

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Gayathri Author

About Author Gayathri Nagarajan

Gayathri, a trusted study-abroad expert, with expertise in standardized tests like IELTS, TOEFL, PTE, GRE, and GMAT. With a strong tech background from SASTRA University, she excels in software testing and has a passion for content writing and digital marketing. She aids students in finding the perfect academic fit, offering guidance on course selection, LOR and SOP writing. She remains up-to-date with the latest trends in higher education, delivering credible, accurate information on international education, including courses and test prep materials. As a trusted Study abroad expert at Kanan International, explore her latest blogs and articles for comprehensive insights into studying abroad and realizing your academic aspirations.

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