Scientists studying how sleep affects memory have found that the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering brain better remember things that it learned the evening before. The smell of roses -- delivered to people's nostrils as they studied and, later, as they slept -- improved their performance on a memory test by about 13 percent.The new study, appearing today in the journal Science, is the first rigorous test of the effect of odor on human memory during sleep. The results, whether or not they can help students cram for tests, clarify the picture of what the sleeping brain does with newly learned material and help illuminate what it takes for this process to succeed.
Researchers have long known that sleep is crucial to laying down new memories, and studies in the 1980s and 1990s showed that exposing the sleeping brain to certain cues -- the sound of clicking, for instance -- could enhance the process. But it is only in recent years that scientists have begun to understand how this is possible.
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Scents and Memories
I've always noticed that a scent can bring back memories better than almost anything else. Every time a smell a certain perfume, I still remember a girl a knew while in high schoolâ€â€some 35 years ago. It's interesting that the brain seems to link sensory experiences to memory, and form long-term bonds that are not easily broken.