Is it Possible to Smell Your Memories?

 Is it Possible to Smell Your Memories?

Throughout history we have seen the major discoveries and advancements that society has made in science. The topic that sticks out the most is when we dive into the topics of psychology and neuroscience. When we look at the past century, there have been so many new innovations and technologies in terms of studying the brain. We look back at how we analyzed and studied the brain versus the new methods that are completed today. As we learn more and more about the brain, we find deeper connection between the neural networks within the brain and find more about how they work with each other. As we look into Grella’s research, we see that smell and olfaction have a bigger role than we may have originally thought of. Although it is one of the more complex systems in the human body, Grella’s research “Smell Tests Could One Day Reveal Head Trauma and Neurodegenerative Disease” highlighted the importance smell has on memory. It showed the deeper connection that the hippocampus holds with the prefrontal cortex as we will continue to discuss.

In the article "Odor modulates the temporal dynamics of fear memory consolidation”, Grella et al. explains that specific odors can act as a cue to recall memories. Now we know that the hippocampus is the brain structure responsible for memory, but new information from her research shows much more than that. The sense of smell shows how it can be connected with memories and that smelling certain odors can elicit memory retrieval. When talk about retrieval and recall, we can see the difference between this and encoding/storage. Grella points out that although memory is encoded in the hippocampus, it is later stored in the prefrontal cortex. 

Research and previous studies have shown that memories could be associated with certain senses. When we eat something or when smell something distinct, we associate those senses with a certain memory because during that significant event that is stored in your memory, that same sense is stored along with that memory. This is why when we smell or see or taste that specific thing that was encoded with the memory, the memory is then recalled upon. This proves to have both positive and negative aspects. This proves to be a positive aspect when certain senses bring up fond memories of your childhood experiences or just good times in general. However, the opposite may be the case when we look at patients with PTSD. Eliciting a a certain smell or sight can trigger harsh or terrible memories that a patient might be trying to bury away.

It is very interesting to see how far these findings have come and to see what these new studies will take us. We have seen how much we’ve come in the past century, we can only imagine what we will discover in the new future. There is that much more technology to help us find new discoveries that much faster.

Works Cited

Akben, Cantürk, and Hamit Coskun. “Reintroduction of Odor Combined with Cognitive Stimulation Supports Creative Ideation via Memory Retrieval Mechanisms.” Creativity Research Journal, vol. 31, no. 3, July 2019, pp. 309–319. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/10400419.2019.1641686.

Engle, Jeremy. “What Smells Trigger Powerful Memories for You?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Nov. 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/learning/what-smells-trigger-powerful-memories-for-you.html?searchResultPosition=2.

Grella, Stephanie L., et al. “Odor Modulates the Temporal Dynamics of Fear Memory Consolidation.” Psychological and Brain Sciences, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1101/2019.12.19.881615.

Heck, Detlef H et al. “The rhythm of memory: how breathing shapes memory function.” Journal of neurophysiology vol. 122,2 (2019): 563-571. doi:10.1152/jn.00200.2019