ELI5: Why do we feel that certain smells are associated with specific places or moments? For example, I always feel that hotels have a distinct smell, or my grandmother’s house. What is the reason behind the connection between smells and memories?
ELI5: Why do we feel that certain smells are associated with specific places or moments? For example, I always feel that hotels have a distinct smell, or my grandmother’s house. What is the reason behind the connection between smells and memories?
Comments
Because they do. Those places smell like those places. It’s not random.
For example the public bathroom smell comes from facility maintenance people using the same kind of cleaners, deodorizers and soaps.
Most rec swimming pools smell like chlorine because they almost always use chlorine.
Retirement home smell like yeast infections and old people, because they are filled with old people who have yeast infections.
Smell is literally wired into your brain differently. The olfactory bulb hooks into your parasympathetic nervous system in places associated with emotion and memory.
Other senses, especially sight and hearing, are filtering almost all their input through the sympathetic system first, so that it can connect directly to pieces like the language centers for additional processing. By the time it hits that more “raw reaction” part of your brain it has already been a little watered down in terms of impact.