Study shows that smells can activate emotional memories

Study shows that smells can activate emotional memories

A study conducted by the researchers from Utrecht University in The Netherlands has revealed that smells can trigger powerful and emotional memories from the past more effectively than sounds. This new study supports the theory proposed by Marcel Proust in his novel.

The idea is called the Proustian phenomenon and is quite well-known across the world. It proposes that our mind connects different smells with different memories of the past and is more powerful than any other sense to help us recall those past memories.

This idea was named after Marcel Proust, the French writer who first introduced this theory in his novel, À la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time). The novel describes a character who recalls long-forgotten memories from his childhood vividly after smelling a tea-soaked madeleine biscuit.

The scientists suggest that the specific effect of smells on our memory is may be related to the proximity of the closeness of our olfactory bulb that is essential in processing smells, and the amygdala and hippocampus brain regions which control emotion and memory.

However, although the theory is well-known anecdotally, but so far there have been no studies to firmly establish that the phenomenon even exists but now the researchers might have come closer to proving the theory after an experiment.

The team of scientists from Utrecht University in The Netherlands took 70 female students and played them a video footage designed to provoke aversion. While the females watched the film, the scientists secretly pumped the smell of cassis into the room with coloured lights directed onto the back wall and neutral music was played in the background.

After a week, exposing the same smell, lights or sounds, the scientists asked the participants to recall their memories of the film. The participants who were exposed to the cassis smell remembered more details about the film and found their memories more unpleasant than those who were exposed to sound or lights.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=11300

Posted by Zeeshan Gohar on Jan 31 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry