7 ms·
Simple fragrance method boosts cognitive capacity: study
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ftxbro 3y ago> It involved men and women aged 60 to 85 without memory impairment. All were given a diffuser and seven cartridges, each containing a single and different natural oil. People in the enriched group received full-strength cartridges. Control group participants were given the oils in tiny amounts. Participants put a different cartridge into their diffuser each evening prior to going to bed, and it activated for two hours as they slept. People in the enriched group showed a 226% increase in cognitive performance compared to the control group, as measured by a word list test commonly used to evaluate memory.
- oblib 3y agoI'm in the beginning of that age group so I'm gonna have to look into this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- levzhazeschi 3y ago> The key analysis was a 2 × 2 mixed ANOVA with Time (Pre vs. Post) as the repeated (within subjects) measure and Group (Control vs. Treated) as the across-subjects measure. Given the matching of other variables including age, gender and years of education, we did not include these variables as covariates in the model. A two-sided P less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. We used SAS9.4 for all statistical analyses. Can anyone explain why is it reasonable to assume normality here?
- nazgul17 3y agoI am not sure about this specific case, but I want to point out that there is a big misunderstanding with this normality assumption in t tests: it's not the distribution of the data that needs to be ~normal, but rather the distribution of the sample mean, which usually is ~normal, thanks to the central limit theorem. https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00064.2017 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00064...
- jsocuwl 3y agoIsn't that study financed by P&G aka maker of Febreeze?
- oblib 3y agoYes, Procter & Gamble funded it. That seems to like something they might and should be interested in. Personally, I realized at a young age I was very affected by some fragrances and perfumes. I got vicious headaches and felt sickened when exposed to some of those. It was especially bad at some stores that doused their store with fragrances, and in Churches where both men and women would slather fragrances on themselves before going there. They didn't bother my wife and daughters at all though and I finally had to demand they stop using them in our house. Because of that I learned to gtfo of places as soon as I walked in and smelled it. And I started buying my wife and daughters pure Rose Oil because that actually made me feel pretty good when I got a few whiffs of it, and they all loved that. Apparently I was not even close to alone with those adverse reactions because around mid 2000s stores began to quit doing that and I very seldom detect those toxins when I go in stores now. I never found out exactly what was that affected me, but it was sure vicious. I think it may have been some sort of "bonding agent" that made fragrances "stick" better and last longer. Procter & Gamble sells a lot of stuff with fragrances in them. It behooves them to make sure their products are not sickening folks and, if they can, provide some real benefit.
- rPlayer6554 3y agoI'm absolutely with you. Perfumes, new cars, things with artificial smells can really get me.
- throwaway290 3y agoNew car smell is actually all harmful outgassing from plastic so not without reason.
- astrange 3y agoThis is a frequent midbrow complaint, but it doesn't matter who funds studies as long as they're correctly constructed. Especially because otherwise you won't get the studies because nobody else cares.
- rhelz 3y agoI really wish I could just take these sort of results at face value the way I used to. But the replication crisis was real. It happened. No doubt its still happening. How could we ever read something like this and not just dismiss it out of hand? 226% boost in cognitive capacity? From a scent, delivered to a population which is old enough to be experiencing subtantial age-related smelling loss? Is it just me? If so what am I missing?
- gweinberg 3y agoIt's not just you. The result sounds ridiculously strong, impossibly strong.
- samstave 3y agoScent has a long history in the evolution of our memories. Remembering the smell of rotten food saved billions of lives over thousands of years. So if there is some neurotrophic result from any increase due to scents, then whatever it is, may be good.
- Tao3300 3y ago> Remembering the smell of rotten food saved billions of lives over thousands of years. Probably, yet somehow so many cultures still developed fermentation.
- samstave 3y agoInteresting point. I guess our sense of smell coupled with memory and observation and poisoning our enemies and losing our loved ones over the eons allowed for a sophisticated pallets such as the nuances sommeliers have
- throwuwu 3y agoKind of a big difference in smell. Can you really not tell the difference?
- 3y ago
- cf100clunk 3y agoReminds me of the 1963 Czech SciFi film ''Ikarie XB 1'' and how deep space crew members used olifactory cartridges somewhat cigarette-like, triggering memories and stimulating earthly sensations. Fast forward to 15:48 for one of those scenes lasting about 1 minute: https://archive.org/details/ikarie-xb-1-1963 https://archive.org/details/ikarie-xb-1-1963 It seems to me a market will be there if UCI's fragrance method is safe and inexpensive.
- morninglight 3y ago"A product based on their study and designed for people to use at home is expected to come onto the market this fall." Obvious Question: Does Procter & Gamble have any involvement with this product?
- print_goto_ten 3y agoThey sponsored it
- Tao3300 3y agoThey'd be stupid not to!
- effingwewt 3y agoAnd thus, the spice must flow. When I was a child I looked forward to all the amazing medical breakthroughs that would come in my lifetime. Now all I can imagine are companies patenting them, stifling innovation and causing prices to skyrocket. Glad this 'article' is BS.
- terminalcommand 3y agoAside from comments claiming that the article is BS because it is funded by P&G, I can tell that aromatherapy works. Be scientific, try it yourself. 1. Get 100% lavender oil, put a couple of drops onto your pillow before sleep. Sleep and see how rested you are. 2. Get a diffuser. Set it up drop a few drops of lavender oil in it. Let it run while you watch a movie, read news etc. Feel the relaxation and calm. 3. Drop a few drops of peppermint oil into the diffuser before you do a task that requires concentration. Feel the alertness. I do not know about the health benefits, but essential oils work on me if I want to relax or increase my attention passively.
- droopyEyelids 3y agoMore and more people are noticing you can actually feel lavender working, and there are studies proving it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17267908/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17267908/ https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/2019/9/feature/3-feature-lavender https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/2019/9/feature/3-feature-lavend... This is a different (linked?) effect than what you were talking about but it's good evidence that some essential oils do change our bodies
- wizofaus 3y agoI actually had a doctor recommend lavender oil capsules for treating a family member's anxiety...was rather surprised but it seems there's at least enough science behind it to persuade medical professionals.
- nojs 3y agoSlate star codex recently did an article about this: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lavenders-game-silexan-for-anxiety https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lavenders-game-silexan...
- Scalene2 3y agoSomeone will probably say that the (real and positive) results are due purely to the placebo effect. I say, so what, the results are real, who cares what the mechanism of action is as long as it's harmless.
- ggm 3y agoSmell as a trigger for childhood memories in very old people is well known. All kinds of smells: horse poo for instance, woke up some very apathetic older people to talk about their memories of time before cars were common.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoThis does not seem related to this thread except that it involves smell.
- ggm 3y agoIt is a temporary boost of their cognitive capacity. People who are non-verbal have often slid a long way down towards dementia, and bringing it back by evoking deeper well seated childhood memory unlocks the last vestiges of capacity to talk, to sing, to dance. (it happens with music from their childhood too) I think it relates more strongly to this thread than you, but perhaps I am wrong?
- CyberDildonics 3y agoDo you have an example of someone who had dementia and was non-verbal that smelled something then was able to talk, sing and dance?
- russellbeattie 3y agoHere's a paper on the effects of rosemary on long term memory [1]. And a great video explaining how aromatherapy is believed to work [2]. After I saw these, I went and bought a bottle of rosemary extract and was surprised to find out it smell exactly like VapoRub to me (even though it doesn't contain any). 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2314808X16301890 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2314808X1... 2. https://youtu.be/zackfqlOwZ4 https://youtu.be/zackfqlOwZ4
- formvoltron 3y agoi always knew my scratch & sniff sticker collection would one day come in handy.
- morninglight 3y agoAromatherapy: Making Dollars out of Scents "Aromatherapy has most of the attributes needed to thrive in the quack marketplace. As far as I know, however, its advocates are not pressing for inclusion under national health insurance. " https://www.srmhp.org/archives/aromatherapy.html https://www.srmhp.org/archives/aromatherapy.html ....
- falsandtru 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37004418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37004418
- mil22 3y agoWeak science. They ran a battery of 12 tests and looked for one with a statistically significant difference at the 5% level. If there were no actual differences, how many tests would you need to run to find at least one that by chance shows significance? If you run 20, you’d expect 5% to do so, on average, which is 1. Running 12 and finding 1 is not a significant finding. Then, suspiciously, the only statistically significant cognitive test improvement they found was on trial 5 of a verbal learning test, which showed little to no improvement on any of the other trials. That makes no sense. Finally the brain changes had a p-value of 0.046, which is barely significant by even the weak 5% threshold, and the brain changes weren’t correlated with the test result improvements. Perhaps interesting, but only if replicated.
- ClassyJacket 3y agohttps://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/
- vixen99 3y agoGood point but anecdotally I think there is something here. Most of us have the experience at some point in our lives when an unusually-encountered smell evokes an event or earlier period in our lives. Many people report that this then links to a further array of memories. Nothing unusual about this. Proust famously described this in his extensive magnum opus 'Remembrance of Things Past' and so have many other authors to a lesser degree. So it's more than 'perhaps interesting'; there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that exposure to such chemicals might work to renew lapsed connections.
- Madmallard 3y agomethods that boost cognitive capacity that definitely work that no one is surprised by: sleeping 8 hours a night (if you aren't someone who requires less) eating healthy food usually involving lots of plants aerobic exercise meditation removing distractions from your life reading and learning new things There is plenty of availability of all of these things that diligent efforts on them can pay enormous dividends and it's difficult to overdo. There isn't a need to do other things to achieve this goal unless you're sacrificing part of your likely needs...