Noses know

[venta]

I've spent the last hour or so feeling randomly nostalgic about a particular period of my life. Well, not nostalgic, exactly, since it's not a time I look at with fondness, but unexpectedly reminded of it.

I've just worked out why. Last time I had on the jumper I'm wearing, I must also have been wearing a particular perfume. The jumper smells faintly of it, and it's a perfume I used to wear a lot at the time I'm remembering.

I find smell an unexpectedly evocative sense, and am regularly yanked to a particular memory because of some scent drifting past. Sometimes I find it difficult to place why the smell and the memory go together.

I wonder whether it's possible to associate them deliberately, and then use a scent as a particular 'trigger' to retrieve a memory.

Me? Cheating in the exam? Oh no. I always carry 200 small vials around with me...

Comments

[zotz]

There are very sound neurobiological reasons for this. As I recall, the areas of the brain that deal with mood and memory developed out of those concerned with smell - hence the sense of smell being the most evocative.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

More precisely (but still *highly* speculatively) said areas probably developed out of the areas concerned with emotion. Initial evolutionary attempts at memory were probably simple associations- given a certain stimulus, run! This all goes on in the amygdala, which sits right under, and strongly influences, more recently evolved temporal structures dealing with full-on memory. Amygdala (and temporal cortex) are in fact linked to all sensory modalities one way or t'other, but you can argue that evolutionarily, smell is a good fight-or-flight cue, because many animals use it as such.

But like I said below, any modality will do.

[quisalan.livejournal.com]

There is actually a theory that you should try and wear the same perfume when you revise huge block topics for this purpose.

You then have different dabs of perfume on you in the exam; ie on each wrist, back of each hand, on a seperate pen.

The only problem is that:
1) you can't use more than about 6 smells before your nose gets confused
2) You smell very strange to the uninitiated
3) If everyone did it, the entirety of Schools would smell and one candidates perfume would cancel out anothers!

Oh dear

[venta.livejournal.com]

The phrase

your nose gets confused

immediately made me think of davefish.

:)

sense of smell

[metame.livejournal.com]

Always found it the most evocative.

Read an interesting book called Fast Food Nation recently, amongst other things there were some interesting interviews with smell scientists (I'm sure they had a proper name).

Cheating?

[condign.livejournal.com]

Technically, I don't think that would be cheating, although the rules of an Oxford University exam are strange indeed.

I have to admit that as much as I'm OK with the taste of coffee, it's the smell of it I'm really in love with. And no, I'm not just saying that because I ran out of instant coffee and had to make 'real' stuff this morning. :)

Yes

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

There is such an effect, with scent as well as other sensory modalities. More interestingly this can have the opposite effect if the cue is not present, so if you learn something using a strong scent cue, you might find it hard to remember when the scent has gone.

This effect is even stronger with actual physiological state changes. So, if you really want to cheat in exams, do all your learning while intoxicated, then bring the relevant poison to the exam with you. Sadly, the proctors tend to be slightly stricter on this sort of thing :)

This is the only time my psychology degree is ever going to be useful, isn't it.

Yes. Yes, it is.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

State dependent learning is lovely, though. Overton (1964) and all that.

And yes, it does suggest that your most useful learning is going to be done in conditions that approximate those you're going to be using said learning in. And Weingartner (1978) showed that tiredness was a 'state' to be taken into account for these purposes.

See me recycle all my degree knowledge given the slightest pretext in the desperate hope that I didn't waste three years of learning ;)

Re: Yes. Yes, it is.

[metame.livejournal.com]

All that knowledge comes flooding back to you when you're online? (just like you were for those 3 years)

re: state depedent learning - I went to a comprehensive, does that count?
;-)

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

It is, as lanfykins said. From GCSE onwards I revised with a sprig of lemonbalm in my hand, and took lemonbalm into exams to help with memory blocks. Seemed to work for me. Plus citrus smells are supposed to aid the memory anyway.