Why does the hint of certain smells instantly transport you back to childhood? It may be because the first smell you associate with an object is given privileged status in the brain
Yaara Yeshurun and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, showed volunteers an object such as a chair or pencil that was unlikely to already be associated with a smell at the same time as exposing them to an odour or sound. An hour-and-a-half later, they showed them the same object with a different odour or sound.
One week later, the researchers showed the volunteers the object again and asked them which odour or sound they associated with it, while scanning their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Volunteers were more likely to mention the first odour – and when they did, their brains showed a characteristic pattern of activity in the hippocampus. This pattern did not appear if volunteers plumped for the second odour, or if they had been exposed to sounds rather than smells.
Yeshurun concludes that the brain reserves a special pattern of activity for memories that represent the first time we have associated a smell with a particular thing – and that such pairings are most likely to be laid down in childhood.
The brain may have evolved to lay down these privileged memories because it enhanced our ability to sense danger. "This is especially true for unpleasant odours," says Yeshurun.
This makes sense, says Rachel Herz, author of The Scent of Desire: Discovering our enigmatic sense of smell and visiting professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. "The evolutionary implication is that the situation in which you first encounter an odour is likely a reliable maker for its meaning, and it is highly adaptive to learn that meaning so that the odour can be responded to appropriately in the future."
Journal reference: Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.066
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Old Childhood Memories
Wed Nov 11 04:34:50 GMT 2009 by gena
http://none
I remember the smell of crayons, grape cool aid, cinnamon graham crackers and the smell of my mom lighting a winston cigarette with matches and the smell when my dad lit a cigarette with a zippo lighter...
Works with taste too (as it is a modified sense of smell). every time I taste Pepsi I remember Little League games, after which we would get a Pepsi from the concession stand.
It can work when you eat/drink or "taste" something, but not for the reason you state. Taste is not in fact a modified sense of smell, although the two senses definitely work in concert to create our experiences. Considering the present research, your experience when drinking Pepsi is likely to have resulted from the fragrance chemicals in the Pepsi, even though you may consciously associate the memories with the flavor.
Old Childhood Memories
Wed Nov 11 14:40:45 GMT 2009 by Gary
http://freetubetv.net
lol I agree with the top half of that..but instead of winston cigs I'd replace it with the smell of gasoline at a gas station or grass clippings
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