Reading 2: Smell and Memory
Smell and Memory Smells like yesterday Why does the scent of a fragrance or the mustiness of an old trunk trigger such powerful memories of childhood? New research has the answer, writes Alexandra Witze. A. You probably pay more attention to a newspaper with your eyes than with your nose. But lift the paper to your nostrils and inhale. The smell of newsprint might carry you back to your childhood, when your parents perused the paper on Sunday mornings. Or maybe some other smell takes you back -the scent of your mother‘s perfume, the pungency of a driftwood campfire. Specific odors can spark a flood of reminiscences. Psychologists call it the “Proustian phenomenon”, after French novelist Marcel Proust. Near the beginning of the masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, Proust‘s narrator dunks a madeleine cookie into a cup of tea -and the scent and taste unleash a torrent of childhood memories for 3000 pages. B. Now, this phenomenon is getting the scientific treatment. Neuroscien...