Olfactory memory, or when the great perfumers wake up our memories

Published on 05/14/2024 11:35

Who has never felt a strong emotion in recognizing in the street a perfume that suddenly brought up the memory of a house, a greed, a loved one? Playful decoding in six families of powerful evocative fragrances.

Cross the scent of an old lover , smell the smell of a holiday home, a childhood dish ... A smell can pick us by surprise and remind us of a situation, a place or a person who seemed buried in our memory. A mysterious phenomenon, whose writers have made their honey and madeleines, and who is a powerful ally for perfumers.

Smell, the only meaning connected directly to the brain

The explanation is scientific: the sense of smell is an immediate sense, sensitive, intimate, the only one having a direct connection to the brain. "When we smell, we breathe molecules of the air around us," says Anne Churchill, an expert neuroscientist at Givaudan, who goes through the epithelium, a space in the nasal passage where the receptor cells responsible for their detection are located. This triggers electrical signals transmitted to the olfactory bulb (above the nose) which, connected to the cortex, sends them directly into the limbic system, part of the brain governing emotions, behaviors and long-term memory. "

It is thanks to this organization of the brain that the smells can overwhelm us with emotion . "The experimental research using MRI shows that even fragrant memories are more vivid and emotional factors as images or words," she continues.

A smell linked to an association of ideas

And the stimulation of our flair begins at birth: we learn to associate certain smells with objects, places or emotions. "A newborn baby is immediately attracted by the smell of breast milk, and at a few hours he shows his preferences, turning his head, for the smells he has felt in his stomach, by feeding his mother. At two weeks, he makes the difference between the smell of milk from his own mother and that of another woman. "

Olfactory memory is more implicit than explicit. We feel without necessarily being aware of it, and to imprint, the smell must be linked to an association of ideas.

"During a meal, for example, we memorize the smell, like the taste, without realizing it, but the emotion amplifies the memory." The olfactory memories refer to very intimate moments Proustian , says Céline Manetta, doctor in psychology and researcher at IFF. It is the famous memory of Proust's madeleine, dipped in tea, on Sunday morning at his aunt's house ...

Stimulate the sense of smell to find memory

This power led to stimulate the sense of smell to find memory. "CEW's olfactory workshops (the Cosmetic Executive Women network) include the neuro-rehabilitation service of the Raymond-Poincaré Hospital in Garches, aimed at brain-injured patients after a stroke or head trauma. to elicit memories that patients could not achieve with pictures or language, and often succeeds, "she continues.

A 19-year-old amnesic patient pronounced her first word - "Prosper" - by smelling gingerbread. This method of approximations is obviously known to perfumers. Cécile Mathon, creator at Mane, says that she learned her trade by feeling the raw materials by contrasts, then by families - woody, oriental , flowery , citrus ... - immediately associating each smell with a memory.

Here again, the more intense the emotion, the better the smell is acquired, whether the memory is positive or negative. "The smell then fits effortlessly and for life, we review the situation with anecdotes around and it becomes unforgettable.I stopped the perfume for five years, none has cleared."

Test yourself with the nineteen flavors we have selected, grouped into six large families.

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