Scents, Memories & Emotions: The Powerful Link Explained

The scents of the holidays and everyday life can powerfully evoke memories, triggering emotions and recollections with surprising intensity. The connection between smell and memory is rooted in the brain’s structure, and can be particularly strong for those with a heightened sense of smell.

Scents — a powerful catalyst for memories

Smells are processed in the paleocortex, the oldest part of the brain, near the amygdala – responsible for emotional responses – and the hippocampus, crucial for forming memories, explained Olaf Conrad, a doctor of otorhinolaryngology at Erlangen University Hospital. Tests have shown that smell is the strongest sensory impression when it comes to triggering memories, even negative ones.

“When you smell [this familiar] scent again, you’re back in the memory — in grandma’s kitchen baking Christmas cookies,” Conrad said. He noted that people returning from war, or those who grew up in warzones, may be triggered by the smell of gunpowder.

Important memories are “saved in the brain without a time-stamp,” Conrad said. This means that when a scent linked to a formative memory is encountered, the brain doesn’t immediately recognize it as something from the past, impacting both traumatic experiences and cherished traditions.

A highly sensitive sense of smell can be painful

Most people experience the connection between smell and memory, but Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) experience sensory stimuli on a much greater level. For HSPs, scents can be more intense, causing physical illness, emotional turmoil, or difficulty concentrating.

Daphne, a young entrepreneur from Germany and an HSP, described how the scent of Chanel No. 5 immediately brings back the pain associated with her mother’s death. She explained that, unlike others, she remains immersed in the memory for extended periods unless she actively works to distance herself from it. “The world fades in a matter of seconds, and you feel the exact same thing you did back then,” she said.

How smells are used in medicine

The strong link between smells and emotions has practical applications in medicine. Professionals in palliative care recognize the calming effects of aromatherapy. The sense of smell can also be an indicator of Parkinson’s disease, as patients often lose their sense of smell in the early stages of the illness.

“There’s no one in the early stages of Parkinson’s who can still smell well,” Conrad said. He also shared a personal example, noting that the smell of fresh pine always put him in a Christmas mood when his family put up their tree.