Smell and Early Memories

Post Reply New Topic

Is a better sense of smell related to having more, earlier memories? Does a below average sense of smell decrease this? In other post many people have said that they have memories earlier than most. Is this due to enhanced senses in general, or a more specific sense of smell? I have almost no sense of smell and have very few memories before five years age. I remember reading somewhere that smell is processed in a different part of the brain separate from the other senses. I can't remember how reliable the source was though.

Also, I'm not sure if this should go in this forum or the Random Discussion forum.

There IS an organ devoted to smell. And YEP, different senses are processed differently, unless there is like a short circuit called synesthesia. Smell can trigger memories, but that wouldn't be why you have trouble remembering before 5. MOST people do. HECK, I thought I did, except for when I first became interested in electronics when I believe I was 3, but I have had dreams about when I was a baby, some memories I know I was certainly a toddler, and I have asked my mother a lot about a trip SHE insisted we didn't have, but now we have proof it happened about 3 months after I was 4.(She admits it, and there are PICTURES! She had to remember after that! )

Steve

the earlier memories thing is a false memory. noone remembers as far back as some people claim. these people are easily manipulated. there was a test that showed you the colour blue, than asked what colour was your crib. most ppl answered they did not remember, than everyone else answered blue. see they just say blue, than tried to remember something that was not there, and the brain fulled it in. see even if it was possible to remember that far back, a baby has not developed the vision enough to see colour yet.

i have had a similar experience, but the pictures turned out to be a different trip.

I have a great smell machine! I don't have any solid memories before age five. Although I do HAve an odd flasing of memories, like I remember being held By the lady next door supposidly that was when I was just a baby! I remember just crying like you wouldn't believe! I have odd memeries like that. But Nothing that really stads out from before five.

NICE TRY! I even remembered the poncho and hat, and remember the couple giving them to me. I remembered the comic book that I lost many years ago. I even remember taking it off the shelf in the store. BTW I TOLD THEM about the memories, they didn't tell me.

Steve

Smell is supposed to be the sense that most strongly triggers memory, but I don’t think it is responsible for helping them form in the first place.

If I smell salt water I am instantly taken back to my grandmother’s house on the ocean, which I haven’t visited since before I was 8 years old. Chanel No. 5 perfume instantly reminds me of my mother getting dressed up to go out. Coppertone suntan lotion instantly brings me back to childhood summers I spent outside playing in the sun. But I don’t think I remember any of these things only because they are associated with smells. The smell just brings it back more vividly.

Certain sounds can have this affect on me too. If I hear a snowmobile on TV or in a movie, it instantly reminds me of my hometown because I used to hear them constantly in the winter (it was a small, northern town and swear 1 in 3 households had a snowmobile; and people were allowed to drive them through town).

My earliest known memories aren’t associated with smells or sounds at all, but rather are visual. The strongest of my early memories is of staying in the local high school gymnasium during a severe snowstorm – I was just over 3 years old. I remember seeing a sea of sleeping bags and people all spread out on the floor of the gym, and I also remember running around through them with my sister (14 months younger than me).

I think that there is a difference between happy memories and memories of unhappiness.
Memories of unhappiness may be visual, or auditive, but they do not engage the whole of your emotional structure as happy memories do. Smells have the power to recover the whole of your life experience. I may enumerate many smells which bring to life some of your happy moments: some kind o burned pine wood, brackish water, some mushrooms, sweat in some context (woman’s sweat), moss, the indescribable smell of a forest… well they are so many that it would take more of a page to contain them. And, after all, most of them come to your conscience only when you experience them. Sometime I open my window and I breath some special air that I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s something extraordinary, I couldn’t say why and what. There are disagreeable smells (I can’t stand smoke for example, a cigarette end can drive me out of a room), there are many disgusting odors but I just must avoid them thy don’t evoke anything (except perhaps disinfectants).

i like the smells in the laundry matt

I've heard somewhere that the part of the brain that processes scent is close to the part of the brain that stores long term memory, but I don't know how true that is. It makes sense though.