Have you ever smelled something that transported you back to your childhood? Or maybe smelling an old sweater or pillow brought you back to one of your long lost romantic partners? Well this is the work of something called, “odor evoked autobiographical memory”.

On today’s episode, we are exploring our sense of smell and how a specific scent can bridge our memory and bring us to the past…recalling or eliciting an emotion, physiological or psychological response. 

The concept of scent or smell, is one of our most powerful senses in allowing us to consciously or subconsciously evoke both positive and negative emotional reactions.

When one goes about their normal routine, we don’t always pay attention to it, but we experience countless scents throughout the course of our day. At any given point, we inhale thousands of odor molecules every time we take a breath. 

They come from whatever is around us, our hands, our clothes, someone’s body odor, etc. We are often not conscious of what we sense, because olfaction is part of the subconscious.