Sniffing out memories ( From Proust's Madeleines to the over...)

Sniffing out memories

Date:11/9/2009

From Proust's Madeleines to the overbearing food critic in the movie Ratatouille who's transported back to his childhood at the aroma of stew, artists have long been aware that some odors can spontaneously evoke strong memories. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now revealed the scientific basis of this connection. Their research appeared in the latest issue of Current Biology.

Graduate student Yaara Yeshurun, together with Profs. Noam Sobel and Yadin Dudai of the Institute's Neurobiology Department, thought that the key might not necessarily lie in childhood, but rather in the first time a smell is encountered in the context of a particular object or event. In other words, the initial association of a smell with an experience will somehow leave a unique and lasting impression in the brain.

To test this idea, the scientists devised an experiment: First, in a special smell laboratory, subjects viewed images of 60 visual objects, each presented simultaneously with either a pleasant or an unpleasant odor generated in a machine called an olfactometer. Next, the subjects were put in an fMRI scanner to measure their brain activity as they reviewed the images they'd seen and attempted to remember which odor was associated with each. Then, the whole test was repeated images, odors and fMRI with the same images, but different odors accompanying each. Finally, the subjects came back one week later, to be scanned in the fMRI again. They viewed the objects one more time and were asked to recall the odors they associated with them.

The scientists found that after one week, even if the subject recalled both odors equally, the first association revealed a distinctive pattern of brain activity. The effect was seen whether the smell was pleasant or unpleasant. This unique representation showed up in the hippocampus, a brain structure involved in memory, and in the amygdala, a brain structure involved in emotion. The p
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Contact: Yivsam Azgad
news@weizmann.ac.il
972-893-43856
Weizmann Institute of Science
Source:Eurekalert

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