5 ms·

There are a tiny handful of smells (perhaps 3) that I encounter very rarely (maybe once every few years), and for whatever reason, they bring back childhood mem

by ohazi 7y ago

There are a tiny handful of smells (perhaps 3) that I encounter very rarely (maybe once every few years), and for whatever reason, they bring back childhood memories of a particular place more vividly than just about any other form of recall I've ever experienced. It's always the same smells, and it's always the same place, and it's happened enough times that I dont think I'm imagining it, and nothing else does this. Has anyone else experienced something like this?

DoreenMichele 7y ago
I happened to have watched this old scene recently from a TV show. It's apparently well established that smell is one of the strongest triggers of memory we have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpUjnfF6ZhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpUjnfF6ZhQ
oyebenny 7y ago
Of course!
saiya-jin 7y ago
Definitely. Be it childhood memories, or even just something from few years ago, memories seem to work very well with memory, much better than picture-type images.
m0xte 7y ago
Yes. The smell of the gas meter under the stairs at my nan’s house in the early 1980s. If I smell that ever I get instant recall of staying there when I was a kid.
azepoi 7y ago
Known as Madeleine de Proust in french. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_(cake)#Literary_reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_(cake)#Literary_refe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory
joveian 7y ago
Pierre Gloor's book The Temporal Lobe and Limbic System has an excellent discussion of this pages 316-318. I'll try to type it in by hand and stick it on pastebin later since it is unfortunately a rare out of print book (Google Books has it but it seems to show much less text these days than it used to). Gloor suggest that because low level olfaction is not able to distinguish parts of a smell it is more heavily associated with context than other senses. He notes a study where recognition of olfactory cues are not as immediately reliable as visual or auditory cues but there is very little decay over time of that recognition ability in olfaction while visual and auditory cues are recognized no better than chance after 3 months. He compares the Proust description to electrical stimulation of the amygdala in an epilepsy patient and suggests that particularly strong memories may be amygdala assisted recall (and notes that similarly vivid recall can happen with other senses but seems to be less common).
- joveian 7y ago
  Ok, took a bit longer than I expected to get to it but here it is: https://pastebin.com/UKdMz5zJ https://pastebin.com/UKdMz5zJ I think he overstates the inability to pick out individual smells (presumably from later processing comparing them with memories). Also, I seem to do at least as well recalling odors as I do recalling images, but mostly that is because I am unusually bad at recalling images. I don't think this really affects the overall argument all that much.
m463 7y ago
I remember getting off a plane in Florida and smelling the air... and it brought back SO vividly the last time I had visited florida over 10 year before. It was almost like playing an old video taken on a bright sunny day, in smell-o-vision.

by ohazi 7y ago

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I happened to have watched this old scene recently from a TV show. It's apparently well established that smell is one of the strongest triggers of memory we have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpUjnfF6ZhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpUjnfF6ZhQ

oyebenny 7y ago

Of course!

saiya-jin 7y ago

Definitely. Be it childhood memories, or even just something from few years ago, memories seem to work very well with memory, much better than picture-type images.

m0xte 7y ago

Yes. The smell of the gas meter under the stairs at my nan’s house in the early 1980s. If I smell that ever I get instant recall of staying there when I was a kid.

azepoi 7y ago

Known as Madeleine de Proust in french. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_(cake)#Literary_reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_(cake)#Literary_refe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory

joveian 7y ago

Pierre Gloor's book The Temporal Lobe and Limbic System has an excellent discussion of this pages 316-318. I'll try to type it in by hand and stick it on pastebin later since it is unfortunately a rare out of print book (Google Books has it but it seems to show much less text these days than it used to). Gloor suggest that because low level olfaction is not able to distinguish parts of a smell it is more heavily associated with context than other senses. He notes a study where recognition of olfactory cues are not as immediately reliable as visual or auditory cues but there is very little decay over time of that recognition ability in olfaction while visual and auditory cues are recognized no better than chance after 3 months. He compares the Proust description to electrical stimulation of the amygdala in an epilepsy patient and suggests that particularly strong memories may be amygdala assisted recall (and notes that similarly vivid recall can happen with other senses but seems to be less common).

joveian 7y ago
Ok, took a bit longer than I expected to get to it but here it is: https://pastebin.com/UKdMz5zJ https://pastebin.com/UKdMz5zJ I think he overstates the inability to pick out individual smells (presumably from later processing comparing them with memories). Also, I seem to do at least as well recalling odors as I do recalling images, but mostly that is because I am unusually bad at recalling images. I don't think this really affects the overall argument all that much.

m463 7y ago

I remember getting off a plane in Florida and smelling the air... and it brought back SO vividly the last time I had visited florida over 10 year before. It was almost like playing an old video taken on a bright sunny day, in smell-o-vision.