Host: Center for Environmental Information Science
Pages 207-212
In studies on the physiological and psychological effects of herbs, despite extensive research on Western herbs, little research has been carried out on the Oriental herbs. Thus in this study, utilizing the results from the Cerebral Blood Flow and the Semantic Differential method, an experiment was performed for the 35 subjects' physiological and psychological reactions to the scents of Oriental herbs. For the Cerebral Blood Flow, the results showed sedative tendencies in the descending order of Citron, Japanese cypress, Mugwort, Japanese corn mint, Japanese pepper, and Shiso. For the Semantic Diffrential method showed that, Shiso, Japanese pepper and Japanese corn mint had a stimulating scent, Citron a refreshing scent, Japanese cypress a woody scent, and Mugwort had a unstimulating scent. The pattern derived from these results suggests that refreshing scents activated more brain sedation than their stimulating counterparts.
