Have you ever been instantly transported to your past love life all of a sudden right in the middle of a road when you pass by a stranger using the same fragrance as your ex? Have you ever wondered how fragrance unlocks new memories in your mind?
The slightest whiff of perfume has the power to instantly trigger long lost memories. Sense of smell is so very powerful that a slightest hint of a familiar fragrance can provoke an exclusive memory or a cherished moment in our lives that we have treasured for ever. The reason is because there is a scientifically proven association in our brains between memory and smell.
We all have experienced the nostalgy that a particular scent of smell carries along. Science says our noses have a way of sniffing out nostalgia and the memories sparked by smell feel nostalgic and emotional, rather than concrete and detailed. This is why the memories evoked by fragrance are more powerful.
All senses are connected with memories, smell in particular has the influence to unlock forgotten memories that trace a whirlwind of emotions. Here we explore how and why scent can provide a direct link to the past.
We can describe things that we look and sounds that we hear, but we cannot describe a particular smell. We can only refer them to another smell like the smell of earth while it rains or the smell of freshly brewed coffee. People in general are not used to talking about smell as a sense.
Of all senses, smell is unique because as we experience the scent, it penetrates directly into the brain. The other senses, such as hearing and vision start at their particular sense organs and move to the ‘thalamus’ before traveling to the brain. This could be one reason why memories that smell triggers are stronger.
Generally smell travels into the emotional parts of the brain while words travel through the thinking parts of the brain. When a particular fragrance enters the nose, it sails through the cranial nerve through the olfactory bulb, which helps the brain process smells. The olfactory bulb is part of the brain that is responsible for processing smells. It is a component of limbic system, the emotional center of the brain. This olfactory bulb is placed just next to the hippocampus which is the primary brain nucleus for these memories.
So whenever we smell our ex's perfume, it was picked up by the complex smell receptors in the nose and travelled directly into the brain and stayed next to the part specialised for encoding experiences. Here the fragrance gets entangled with other memories. Years later, the smell is not only enough to relive that experience but it is also enough to pull out the rest of the memories along with it. This is how smell detangles a particular memory from our brain and transcends time.
