Did you know that scent can affect 75% of your daily emotions?

Jenn King
Mar 25, 2020
2 min read

Nothing is more memorable than a smell

Does the smell of a certain cheap perfume make you feel like you’re back in high school roaming the halls? Does the smell of suntan lotion make you feel relaxed as if you’re on that amazing beach vacation sipping on a pina colada?

Scent can evoke a strong emotional and/or physical response almost instantly. Our sense of smell is a trigger in recalling forgotten events of experiences in our lives.

Scents have a direct line to our emotional processing

When we encounter a smell, olfactory sensory neurons in the nasal epithelium transmit the information to the olfactory bulb. The olfactory bulb is part of the limbic system and is directly linked to 2 areas in the brain that govern emotion and memory – the amygdala and hippocampus.

The amygdala processes responses to our environment, especially those that trigger an emotional response. It’s also responsible for our “fight or flight” response.

Scent triggers memories more than any other senses because our other senses don’t pass through these 2 areas of the brain. All other senses are passed through to the brain’s interpretive centre. So, while we process what we see or hear, what we smell registers emotions immediately.

Scent Memories

When we encounter a new smell, we associate it with our surroundings: the people, places, emotions or events at that moment. We create a scent memory.

When we encounter that smell again, the memory, mood or feeling of that event is triggered. This can evoke feelings of comfort, calmness or invigoration. The smell, and your body’s association with it, will determine how your body responds.

So, we are 100 times more likely to remember something we smell more than something we hear, see or touch.