How smell is a powerful link to emotional memories and can help reduce stress – plus the artist using scent to add another layer to his latest work
- Memories linked to smell not only transport us to different moments in our lives but may also help our overall health by elevating mood and alleviating stress
- After retrieving a stash of mouldy old comic books from his grandparents’ home, one artist worked with a candle company to recreate their decaying smell
Have you ever sifted through a stack of old photographs, reminiscing about the past?
There is an even more potent elixir for time travel, one that bypasses the visual and plunges straight to the heart of recollection. This portal to the past lies in the centre of your face: your nose.
Smells are handled by the olfactory bulb, which runs from your nose to the base of your brain and has connections to your amygdala, which is responsible for processing emotion, and your hippocampus, which is linked to memory and cognition.
Neuroscientists suggest that this close physical connection between the regions of the brain linked to memory, emotion and our sense of smell may explain why our brain learns to associate smells with certain emotional memories.
The sense of smell is so powerful that it can conjure up memories so well that people sometimes feel as though they are experiencing the event again.
