Colored pencils, chocolate cake, grass cut in summer, the grandparents’ room we couldn’t get into and the smell of our mothers when they embraced us, childhood smells inhabit our brains like ajar doors, like powerful connections to an emotional past that we have access to remember those happy days.
Psychologists call them “Fragrant Flashbacks”, which demonstrate the intimate relationship between memory, smell and our childhood. Until age 5, the way a child records his memory is closely related to smell, but as we age, the sense of sight and hearing begins to gain more weight.
- Childhood has its own way of feeling and understanding the world.
- We cannot replace it with ours; children should fill their chests with experiences of positive stimulation.
- Affection and wonderful discoveries.
The study of odors and their relationship to children’s memory is an exciting subject and still little studied, however, scientists like Dr. Maria Larsson reveal that, in fact, the nose is the “physical entry” into our emotional world. Are you developing wonderful and unknown processes that we want to talk to you about this time?
Helen Fields, a writer and medical expert at the Smithsonian Museum, explains through her book “Frangrant Flashbacks?” That during childhood, smell, with taste, are our most important “chemical channels” for understanding the world. After 5 years, we no longer need to carry things in our mouths and our nose is not as receptive either.
Could you say that the smell was, until recently, this?Where only perfumers and sommeliers were specialists, when in fact we faced the most powerful channel that connects the brain and which, in turn, is able to activate very specific emotions and memories. Let’s take a look at this interesting process.
There is only one smell that can rival the smell of rain: the smell of pencil wood.
? Ramon Gomez de la Serna?
When molecules of the smell of a flower or the smell of rain and wet soil, for example, join the epithelium of the nose, a direct signal is sent to the olfactory bulb, a small, delicate structure located just above the eyes.
From there begins a fascinating journey that will take the signal to two very specific channels:
As we can see, for a very certain reason, smell always accompanies emotions. A pleasant smell not only offers well-being or evokes positive memories, it can also make us “consume more”. That’s why many stores use neuromarketing, harnessing the power of our emotions through smell.
We’ve all smelled those childish smells that come suddenly, when you least expect it: when you open an old book and feel a strange “already seen”, or when you associate the scent of cinnamon with this cake that Grandma made?
Do you think there’ll come a time when you get lost?This magical path to connecting smell with emotion is something we should all regret, however, a symptom that appears quickly in Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease is precisely the progressive loss of smell.
Exercises such as making those with this disease work after a rainy day, letting the smells of cooking smells, or the smell of clean clothes, would be daily efforts to slow down the disease a little bit and, above all, offer well-being. allowing him to evoke significant moments from his past.
The smells of your childhood, for example?