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Bad odors revive and strengthen memory

Surprise An unexpected study confirms that unpleasant odors revive and strengthen memory

Where a team of researchers found that memories become stronger when experiments are smelly.

The results of the recent study expand our understanding of what can trigger "Pavlovian responses" (a term in behavioral psychology, describing a form of associative learning), and how negative experiences affect our ability to recall past events.

"These findings show that bad odors can improve memory in both adolescents and adults and suggest new ways to study the way we learn and remember negative and positive experiences," said Kathryn Hartley, assistant professor of psychology at New York University and one of the authors of the study. .

 

As the lead author of the study, Alexandra Cohen, of New York University, said: "Because our results extend to different age groups, unpleasant odors may be used in the future to study emotional learning and memory through the development stages."

The effects of negative experiments on memory have long been known to scientists. For example, if a dog is bitten by a dog, it may develop a negative memory for the dog that has bitten it. The negative association may also extend to all dogs.

In addition, it is likely that the person has a stronger memory of the event than previous experiences with the dogs, because of the trauma associated with the bite.

"The generalization and strength of memory for things associated with bad experiences are fundamental features of anxiety disorders, which often occur during adolescence," says Hartley.

In order to better explain and understand how experiments associated with bad events affect memory at this stage of development, researchers designed the Pavlovian learning task for individuals aged 13 to 25 years.

 

Light electrical shocks are often used in this type of learning task. In this study, researchers used unpleasant odors because they are ethically permissible to study children.

The study included a review of a series of images from two different mental categories, the first of some things (such as chairs), and the other for the viewer (such as snow covered mountain).

When the participants saw the pictures, the olfactory sensor was attached to their nostrils.

The effect of "unpleasant" odors is a different factor from one person to another, and to identify the smells that participants found undesirable, the researchers made the participants before the beginning of the experiment breathe the various smells and infer who you think is hateful.

The odors used were a mixture of chemical compounds, made by a local grouper, including odors like rotten fish rancid and animal manure.

As individuals reviewed the images, the scientists measured the sweating of handcuffs as a sign of response, a common method of research to confirm the making of a negative attitude (the bad smell in this case).

A day later, the researchers tested the memory of the participants in the pictures. The results showed that both adolescents and adults showed better memory, especially for photos associated with bad smell 24 hours after seeing these images.