Last update: May 22, 2016
As I walked down the street, distracted by my thoughts and memories, I smelled a smell. A nearby pastry shop invaded my nostrils with a scent of cookies and steaming croissants, butter, eggs and sugar, which transported me to a different moment in my life, to a different place.
Suddenly, instead of being on one of the streets in my city, I was in a house in the mountains, I was 10 and I was playing hide and seek with my brothers in the garden while my mother cooked. It happened to everyone to hear a smell, a sound, a taste or to see an image and to be transported to a world made of memories.
The five senses can recall memories of our past very clearly and emotionally, releasing positive emotions, such as pleasure or happiness, or negative emotions, such as fear or anger. A song can remind us of a special moment experienced with another person or a trip made with friends. A landscape can make us return to the memories of our adolescence and to what we experienced in a certain place.
âI used to write for you, now I write for the moments you took awayâ.
-VĂctor de la Hoz-
When dealing with memories, between the five senses, the sense of smell is one of the most powerful. A simple smell can trigger a cascade of feelings. The smell of coffee, the smell of wet grass, the smell of a certain perfume ... They let our imagination run wild and, in an instant, they are able to transport us to another place and a different time .
Memories that smell
Smell is the sensory organ closest to the hippocampus, one of the brain structures responsible for our memory. It is connected to the limbic system, which is the emotional center of the brain. The rest of the senses (sight, hearing, taste and touch), on the other hand, have to go a long way before reaching the areas of the brain that deal with memory and emotions.
This means that the very structure of our body and brain is responsible for the ability of smell to awaken very vivid memories in us and to reproduce sensations that contain that mixture of sensitivity and sadness that we call nostalgia.
"There are memories that I will not erase, people that I will not forget, silences that I prefer to keep quiet".
-Fito Paez-
A study carried out by the Spanish psychologist Silvia Ălava, entitled "Smells and emotions", showed that people remember 35% of the smells they perceive and only 5% of the images they see. The study involved 1.000 subjects of both sexes between the ages of 25 and 45 and the psychologist concluded that the memory is able to perceive up to 10.000 different aromas, but she is able to recognize only 200 smells.
According to this study, when we perceive a smell, it is registered in our brain, but it is also associated with the emotion we feel at that moment. In this way, when we recall that smell, the same emotion associated with it also reappears. Returning to the study, 83% of participants ensured they recalled happy moments associated with certain smells and 46,3% admitted that experiencing a familiar smell had a greater impact than seeing an object that reminded them of something.
âIt was inevitable: the smell of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of thwarted lovesâ.
-Gabriel GarcĂa Marquez-
The memories we see
The image of an object, a room or a landscape, for example, can transport us to a moment of our life that we consider pleasant.. It is also possible to have the feeling that you have already been in that place or that you have experienced that situation before, an experience we know as âdejĂ vuâ.
There are two theories regarding this feeling. One of the theories argues that, when we record an episode in our memory, sometimes, one area of ââthe brain does it late compared to the others and the feeling of having already experienced that situation happens when this area records the same late. information. The second theory, on the other hand, holds that, sometimes, an episode triggers the delay of some memories in the memory with which it has a real or imaginary relationship.
Taste and memories
As for taste, when we eat, the brain integrates all sensations with the information it has stored in the memory; look for the data linked to certain dishes that we relate to that same sensation, with previous situations or with other foods that awaken similar stimuli in us. For this reason, taste can transform the sensations triggered by food into memories.
Hearing and memories
As for the sounds, we have all thought about or even listened to a certain soundtrack at a specific time in our life. University of California at Davis psychology professor Petr Janata says that âOur daily life does not have a spontaneous soundtrack, but many of our memories are structured as if they were mental films that are projected in our heads when we listen to a a piece of music that is familiar to us and that acts as a soundtrack â.
Janata explains in her study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, that in a region of our brain, linked to the collection and retrieval of memories, neurons work as a connection center between familiar melodies, memory and memories.
Finally, our five senses are able to transport us into the past and recall our memories at specific times, to make us relive a moment in which we were well or were very happy, but also the opposite. It's just a matter of getting carried away.
