Follow-aware
Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh have discovered that scents are more effective than words at triggering positive memories, which may help people with depression break out of negative thought patterns.
Scientists exposed 32 people between the ages of 18 and 55 years suffering from major depressive disorder to 12 odors in opaque vials.
The scents included ground coffee, coconut oil, cumin powder, red wine, vanilla extract, cloves, shoe polish, orange essential oil, ketchup, and even the scent of Fix VapoRub ointment.
After smelling the vials, the neuroscientists asked the participants to recall a specific memory and whether it was good or bad.
Depressed people who smelled familiar scents were more likely to remember a specific memory or event, such as being in a coffee shop, said Kimberly Young, lead author of the study published in JAMA Network Open, a neuroscience researcher and assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. A week ago, as opposed to the more general memory of them going to a café at some point in their lives.
When compared to word cues, smells trigger memories that seem more “vivid and real.”
“It was surprising to me that no one had thought to look at memory retrieval in people with depression using scent cues before,” Young added. She explained that activating a part of the brain called the amygdala, which controls the “fight or flight” response, helps in… Remembering because the amygdala directs attention to specific events. Smells likely stimulate the amygdala through neural connections in the olfactory bulb, a mass of nerve tissue associated with the sense of smell.
She added that people with depression report difficulty remembering certain autobiographical memories. Because Young knew that smell could trigger happy memories in people who were not depressed, she decided to study smell and memory retrieval in people with depression.
Young said that improving memory in people with depression could help them recover faster.
“If we improve memory, we can improve problem solving, emotion regulation and other functional problems that people with depression often experience,” she revealed.
Young plans to use a brain scanner in the future to prove her theory that smells interact with the amygdala of depressed people.
Source: New York Post