By Ron Hoffman, MD, ANH-USA President and Medical Director
Fragrant memories: One of the most remarkable stories of the summer comes to us from researchers at the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at UC Irvine.
The role of smells in kindling recollections has long been a literary theme, most prominently in the novels of Marcel Proust where evocative scents play a major role. Scientists have long recognized that olfactory pathways are strongly linked to primitive emotional centers within the brain, which in turn elicit memories.
Researchers have also noted that declines in the ability to discern odors can be a harbinger of Alzheimer’s Disease. They therefore designed an ingenious experiment to see if aromatherapy, delivered via diffusers at night while subjects were sleeping, could enhance memory. They even buttressed their conclusions by using precision brain imaging to see if neural pathways associated with recall were fortified in the recipients of aromatherapy.
The results were astounding. Participants in this study reaped a 226% increase in cognitive capacity compared to the control group!
