The Smell-Memory Connection

You know how certain smells can elicit a flood of memories? Seniors Guide writer Terri L. Jones looked into the smell-memory connection – why smell is the most powerful sense in stirring the past.

Recently, my sister and I spent a weekend in an Airbnb on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. In the bathroom was a small bottle of body lotion, and at the first squirt, my sister fell under the spell of its beachy scent. For her, its blend of suntan lotion and salt air scents recalled idyllic summers at the beach, sunning ourselves on the sand, riding the waves, and picking steaming-hot blue crabs around the kitchen table of our beach apartment.

When we left on Sunday, she slipped that bottle of magic into her bag to continue recapturing these treasured childhood experiences back home.

The Proust Effect

So many sensory experiences are capable of literally sweeping us away to a different time, place, or event in our past. However, smell – and by association, taste – have been shown to be the most powerful of the senses in summoning memories. This phenomenon is known as the Proust Effect or involuntary memory .

In Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel, “In Search of Lost Time,” the narrator drinks tea in which he has dunked some madeleine cake and it makes him vividly recall Sunday mornings before mass when his aunt would share this same treat with him. “No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses … And suddenly the memory revealed itself.”

Lima beans have this effect on me. Every time I smell (and taste) the distinctive aroma of lima beans, I’m reminded of my Granny and sitting at her red Formica kitchen table with my sister and our cousins, spooning up bowls of these buttery, velvety ear-shaped beans.

Smells and the brain

Smells are so effective in triggering memories because of how the brain works. When you smell something, like the savory smell of lima beans or the sweet smell of perfume, the olfactory bulb relays that information directly to the hippocampus and amygdala in the brain – those are the same the regions responsible for memory and emotions. Other senses take a less direct route to reach this part of the brain.

Once there, these senses have been shown to evoke memories – and the emotions connected to them – which are typically more positive than those recalled by other senses. According to the National Institutes of Health , the triggering of the smell-memory connection can have psychological benefits, including “enhanced self-esteem, feelings of social connectedness, and deeper meaning in life.”

However, it doesn’t have to be a pleasant smell to give you that warm, fuzzy feeling of times gone by. For example, bus exhaust makes me recall the same summer experiences that the lotion brings back for my sister. During that juncture in our lives, my dad ran a tour bus parking lot at the beach, so smelling these fumes transports me back to those thrilling days of my early teens. Similarly, other people savor the smell of stinky cheese, cigarette smoke, or mothballs because of the people and experiences that these aromas resurrect.

Related: Smell Therapy

Development of smell

Your sense of smell, which develops in the womb, is one of the strongest senses at birth . In fact, while your vision is growing stronger as an infant, you recognize people and places primarily by their scent.

You also form positive or negative responses to those aromas when you’re young because you experience most smells for the first time as a child. Then you go on to remember many of those smells and the experiences attached to them for years to come. That’s why you’ll find that many of these intense, odor-driven memories are from your childhood .

“Even decades later, the same scent can bring the memory and emotional salience of the moment flooding back,” writes Molly McDonough , associate editor of Harvard Medicine magazine.

A waning sense of smell

With age, this powerful sense starts to decline, with more than 75 percent of those over 80 having major olfactory impairment. Even though loss of smell, or anosmia, is inevitable, it shouldn’t be ignored, as it can point to medical conditions such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes.

“Some research suggests that losing the sense of smell may be the start of memory problems and diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” explains Rutgers University-New Brunswick neuroscientist John McGann .

Centering us in the world

Using familiar smells to recapture memories of your youth isn’t living in the past. It’s reminding you of where you are and where you’ve been, according to Sandeep Robert Datta, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School . “We’re dependent on it for a sense of well-being and centeredness in the world.”

Filling your nose with those memory-laden scents can, in turn, fill your heart and your life. You can make the smell-memory connection work for you.

Related: Why Our Senses Matter

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