Memories are really ‘breathbytes’

Maria Isabel Garcia

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Memories are really ‘breathbytes’
[Science Solitaire] Now we know how smell can weave certain memories for us to form the overall tapestry drawn from the other senses

 

The smell of rice cakes is bittersweet for me. I received some old-fashioned rice cake as a gift during the holidays and as much as I regard it as one of my favorites, as soon as I opened it and smelled it, I was infused with a textured mixed feeling of aging, of childhood snapshots and then realizing that some of the people in those memories are now gone. This happens all the time with rice cakes for me.

And for you, it must be something else. Smell does that. It has been known for at least a decade now that smell is the most potent form to bookmark a memory.  But scientists then were not sure why, until the last few years where they were able to peer into what actually happens when people experience emotionally significant things with a smell to bookmark that episode.

Over a decade ago, in New York, I visited one of the meccas for flavors and scents – an organization that concocts thousands of imaginable and imaginative scent combinations that any company, including perfume companies, sell you. When I was met at the door of the office of one of their “nose virtuosos”, instead of extending a hand for me to shake, he extended a piece of paper with a whiff of a particular scent. Now, when I smell that particular scent, I remember him, his shirt, the feel of his handshake after, the windows with perfume bottles line up on the sill and rain outside.

In a couple of studies, there were several remarkable findings between what we smell and what we remember. In one, it was found that people whose experience was bookmarked by a smell, remembered more when they encountered that smell again. In another of those studies, when people were asked to imagine a memory and link it with a smell (even if they don’t actually smell it), the scientists noted that the olfactory cortex – the brain part which processes the smells, lit up. And when they were asked to remember that memory, the same part lit up.

For me, one of the most remarkable findings is that compared to other memory triggers – sight or sound- it is smell that brought up pleasant memories, most of them were memories formed when the subjects were 10 years old or younger. This begins to explain the nostalgia we feel when we smell stuff that date back to the days of our relative innocence.

Scientists now have evidence, based on brain scans of people smelling, that unlike the other senses which are first relayed to the thalamus before being sent to other parts of the brain for processing, smells travel directory to the olfactory bulb. The olfactory bulb is some sort of “nether region” because it is located at the penthouse of your nose and in between your eyes and is actually already part of your brain. It has connections to the hypothalamus – very strongly associated with our long-term memory – and also the “emotional cauldron” of our brains which is the amygdala. Smells, apparently do not get mediated by the thalamus and because of this, and in their raw form, they enter our emotional book keeping.

And it got even more interesting lately because of a recent study that breathing, which is something you have to do in order to smell, in fact, affects how quickly we remember fearful facial expressions and experiences.

The study saw that when you breathe through your nose rapidly, and not through your mouth, you will remember a fearful face more, compared to a “surprised face”.  There is no effect when you breathe through your mouth. This is quite revealing because it is indeed useful to our survival to be able to recognize fear in others so that we could be forewarned that we ourselves are in danger.

In the same study, those who were asked to remember objects by breathing in versus exhaling, remembered more.

We encounter the world first through our senses. If you want to feel really alive, life calls that you graze with your senses wherever you are. Now, we know how smell can weave  certain memories for us to form the overall tapestry drawn from the other senses. As it turns out, “smell” is quite the direct painter of memories. It bypasses the middleman that all the other senses seem to engage. Smell paints them raw, especially when they are stark like “fear”. 

Imagine if you could then have a diary of encounters with smells. Then you will have bytes of memories that were sculpted by your breath – breathbytes. Would it be different in the way you make sense of the same memory had you allowed sights or sounds to bookmark the memory? – Rappler.com

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