Your memory is tied to your nose.
Many of us are familiar with those special moments, when you are taken by surprise by a momentary time stop, nostalgic. The whiff of your mother’s perfume, that evokes an intense and emotional memory of a time in your childhood. Compared to the actual science of memory, little has been gathered on the act of remembering. Recently, however, practical projects in education in health care, and artistic and scientific investigations have been gradually building the roadmap to understanding it. The research allows us to understand what sense memories do to people. They are also used therapeutically, to open doorways back to lost memories; how they operate differently from voluntary, goal-directed memories that are driven by verbal cues (e.g. asking questions, telling stories); how they can more often go further back into childhood than verbally recovered memories; the list goes on.
Why do we love certain smells.
Even if you aren’t keen on scents, perfumes to candles – we all have memories we love to revisit, some sense of the things we like and don’t. The underlying factor that drives you is not just neurological. It is, in some sense, a spiritual and core feeling. The transcendence that occurs when you encounter a smell from memory is the part of you that is subconscious. Taping into it is the fun part.
