It is something with which we are all familiar – the way that a simple smell can suddenly bring on a rush of intense memories. It has long been recognized by writers and scientists alike that odors and scents are very potent triggers of memory.
One of the greatest literary works of the early 20th century, Marcel Proust’s autobiographical novel A la recherche du temps perdu 11 ( Remembrance of Things Past), begins with a famous passage in which Proust encounters the scent of a madeleine – a delicate cake – that has been soaked in lime – blossom tea. The subtle but unmistakable aroma provokes a vivid recollection of a long-forgotten moment from his childhood – the scent provides an unconscious link between entirely different times and places. Many of the classic elements of ascent-triggered memory can be found in Proust’s description: the vividness of the memory and the fact that it was not deliberately recalled; the fact that the triggering scene was an unusual one not encountered every day and that the memory triggered was a very particular one, draw n from past personal experience. Such powerful scent-evoked memories are now known as Proust a moment. Where scent seems to be most powerful in triggering memories is in the emotional intensity of the memory evoked. In experiments, people list more associated emotions in response to scents than to triggers from other senses. They also rate the emotions as being more intense and particular memories as more emotional when they have been evoked by scent.
Episodic memories
Proustian moments are emotionally intense examples of what psychologists call episodic memory. This is the type of memory you use to remember events, such as what you did yesterday. The reason for the strong link between smell, episodic memory, and emotion seems to lie in the structure of the brain. Episodic memories are thought to be stored between the cortex and a relatively primitive area of the human brain called the amygdala-hippocampal complex, which is also the brain’s emotional center. The amygdala-hippocampal complex links directly to the olfactory system, the brain area responsible for the smell. Even more remarkably, it is known that during human evolution, the amygdala-hippocampal complex developed from the olfactory system. In other words, the ability to experience and express emotion grew directly out of the human brain’s ability to process smell. It is, therefore, not you’re prising that scent retains such patentability to trigger strongly emotional memories long after they seem forgotten.
