Scent and Memory: What’s the Connection?

Last Updated by: Michaela W, on: Saturday, 21 August 2021

Has the hint of a smell ever propelled you back in time? The link between scent and memory is powerful. Let's dig deeper!

Have you ever caught a whiff of a smell and instantly been propelled back in time? Perhaps you’re suddenly under a cherry blossom tree on a first date, or maybe you’re on the seaside on a childhood family holiday. We’ve all been there — it’s an incredible phenomenon. And when you stop to think about it, more than any other sense, smell has a unique ability to evoke special memories, feelings and associations. Each fragrance family is a portal to a particular part of your life.

Believe it or not, associations with smell actually impact daily life. No kidding! Researchers from the University of Liverpool have found that smells can manipulate many aspects of human behaviour and cognitive function, especially memory.

Occasion Association

People make smells significant when the particular scent becomes associated with an occasion or person.

As you encounter a smell, you form nerve connections that cause your brain to link the smell to the emotion you’re experiencing at the time. Scientists say it is one of our most incredible abilities as human beings and that none of the other senses has such deep access to our memories. Smell is by far the strongest. Think about it — you may smell someone wearing the same perfume as your favourite school teacher and be transported back to happy times you experienced with your friends or the teacher in class. Or perhaps, every time you smell a musky perfume, you’re reminded of a terrible experience with a strict professor in your university days, something you’d rather not remember. You associate smells with positive and negative experiences, most of the time without you even realising it until you smell that scent again.

Give Your Brain a Boost

If our brains can link a smell to an event or person, we can harness this ability to perform better when it matters. This makes it very possible to use your sense of smell to prompt your memory when studying for an exam or making an important presentation.

If you breathed in a certain scent while you were studying or creating your presentation, your ability to recall that information is improved by inhaling that same smell during the exam or presentation. The simple solution, in that case, is to wear a particular cologne or perfume when you’re prepping and to wear that same scent when it’s go-time.

Scent association, in this instance, can boost your mental performance and unlock your memory. According to one study by the Alexandria Journal of Medicine, scents like lavender and rosemary can significantly increase recall and image memory.

The Love Connection

Fragrances can also be used to remind you of a loved one if you’re spending periods of time apart. Smelling an item of their clothing or their cologne can bring the person to life, more so than a photograph can. Smell is also essential when it comes to attraction between partners. Your body odour is believed to play a role in choosing a partner, so remember that next time you spritz on some perfume! The act of sharing a kiss in itself is thought to have developed from potential partners smelling and tasting one another to decide if they are a good match — that’s how they “swiped right” before the time of Tinder!

Health and Happiness

Smell can also be used to aid good health by inducing feelings of calm and serenity. The simplest way to use perfume to induce relaxation is to pick a signature scent and pair it with a yoga or meditation session. After doing this a few times, every time you catch a whiff of the perfume, you will instantly feel a sense of calm. As previously discussed, smell can be extremely emotive, and the perfume industry has tapped into this for its advantage. Perfumers have developed fragrances that convey various emotions, including desire, power, relaxation and well-being. A spritz of a perfume developed with a certain emotion in mind can put you in the right mood for the right occasion.

Put It into Practice

So how can we use all this knowledge to our advantage? Here are just a few tips: