Sniffing out memories(attern was so profound it enabled the sc...),Health

Date:11/9/2009

attern was so profound, it enabled the scientists to predict which associations would be remembered just by looking at the brain activity within these regions following the initial exposure. The scientists could look at the fMRI data on the first day of the experiment and predict which associations would come up a week later. To see if other sensory experiences might share this tendency, the scientists repeated the entire experiment using sounds rather than smells; they found that sounds did not arouse a similar distinctive first-time pattern of activity. In other words, these results were specific to the sense of smell. 'For some reason, the first association with smell gets etched into memory,' says Sobel, 'and this phenomenon allowed us to predict what would be remembered one week later based on brain activity alone'.

Yeshurun: 'As far as we know, this phenomenon is unique to smell. Childhood olfactory memories may be special not because childhood is special, but simply because those years may be the first time we associate something with an odor.

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Contact: Yivsam Azgad news@weizmann.ac.il 972-893-43856 Weizmann Institute of Science Source:Eurekalert

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