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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ก.ค. 2015
- SciShow explains how smells can bring back early memories -- even memories that your brain didn’t know you had.
Hosted by: Hank Green
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Sources:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23...
www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...
This makes scents
Kishore Shenoy I get it because sense... scents...eh
Kishore Shenoy I nose right?
Kishore Shenoy You are out of odor.
Kishore Shenoy *Flashback to elementary school spelling bee*
"Spell _Scent_" *Panic* "_Scent_ ... C-" I blew it and I couldn't take it back. I just had a to bear it from that point "... C *sigh* E N T."
Kishore Shenoy WAH wah
A few years ago I smelled something that triggered a memory so strong that it felt like I was transported back to when I first smelled it. The sights and sounds of the memory stopped me in my tracks. It was of the first time in Las Vegas. It was so vivid.
This sort of stuff is always interesting to me as I became anosmic (no sense of smell) after having a brain haemorrhage about 8 years ago.
I think for me it is more like "how memories trigger smells". Like when I cook bacon sometimes I swear I can smell it, but then I think its just my brain remembering what bacon smells like and attempts to fill in the gaps.
I'm not sure if that's how it actually works but it sure seems that way.
I get a lot of people saying to me "you're lucky you can't smell that" when they smell something disgusting, to which I reply "would you tell a blind person they were lucky because they could not see something ugly?". That usually shuts them up and makes them think.
I miss the smell of cut grass, bacon and pretty much any food that is baked :-(
Dan Xepha Is your taste impaired because of the loss of your smell? Sorry if I sound stupid or something but I’m just curious.
@Dan Xepha the human brain fool us a lot, olfactory hallucinations are not rare (people just don't notice it), in your case it can show how the hemorrhage affected you. I would comment it with the doctor.
@@nometer1042 you can test it if in a few months you have a cold you will notice that everything taste different. Taste for people that are anosmic is just salty, bitter, sour, sweet and ¿umami? What we call taste is really the brain adding the signals of two senses.
Reminds me of phantom limb
Like when you have to be amputated but you still feel like your limb is there
@@nometer1042 Yes. If he cant smell at all, he won't be able to taste any flavors since they are the same thing. When you are tasting say chocolate and orange you are smelling it trough your throat as you are eating it. However he will be able to taste the five basic tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami.
Omg this happens all the time like i smell my grandmas perfume or homemade mac and cheese and i remember so many things and same thing with songs.
mscraftyperson When ever I smell a burning Match I remember the smell of the morning when I used to live with my grandmother an she would burn some kind of ceremonial sticks to honor the dead.
+mscraftyperson For me, the desert smells like agricultural fertilisers. When I was a kid, I didn't own a good enough computer to play video games, but my cousin's father had a shop with agricultural stuff. They had a computer for the needs of the shop, which could actually play Tomb Raider last revelations... So when the shop was shut, me and him would go in and play our fill. But tomb raider last revelations (4th one) was all about deserts and ancient egyptian places, so I spend a good deal of time running around in the desert all while smelling the fertilisers... I was so surprised when, years later, the same chemical smell just instantly made me picture the desert again xD
How about when smells seem familiar but you can't figure out what they are?
James Craver I think that's a minority, I don't get that sensation, if I smell something I either know it or have no idea, never not know it but remember knowing it, that only seems to happen to my normal memories but that could just be me.
Joey Fogarty Actually, most of the time I get such a smell-meory experience, I don't know what the smell actually is.
Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young, how come I'm never able to identify where it's coming from?
+Cami YES YOU WERE FASTER THAN ME
For the original comment: ( sorry cant tag on ipad ) Thats just forgetting isn't it?
Sometimes a certain smell can take me back to when I was young. How come I'm never able to identify where it's coming from? I'd make a candle out of it if I ever found it try to sell it never sell out of it I'd probably only sell one.
i feel like this comment is from somewhere. sounds familiar
@@quietducks1149 it's the song "stressed out" from twenty one pilots
@@quietducks1149 yeah everytime that happens to me i have a weird metallic gaz smell in my nose that’s weird and that always happens when i have a feeling of deja vu even in my dreams that happened
Exactly🤣I added that song to my playlist because of that verse
ok heathen eat your steak and snow
2:04 Whiskey reminds me of my childhood too.
hol up
@@GhostsGenocide wait a minute
This happens to me so hardcore when I listen to songs I haven't heard in forever, so it's not not just smells
yes but that's a different case buddy
Thats Deja vu
@@ayimanated no
@@ayimanated deja vu is different
the combination of listening to a music and smelling scents which you usually encounter literally takes you back to time.
This happens to me so often! Whenever I smell smoke (like from a fireplace or when someone is having a bbq) it takes me back to my childhood and to my favorite camping place, which I have been going to every year for 24 years!
Sometimes a certain smell can take me back to when I was young how come I'm never able to identify where it's coming from
Tøp reference😇😇😇😆😆
exactly what i was thinking about |-/
|-/
@HelmTheHobbit it be to my brother cause we have the same nose same clothes home grown a stones throw from a creak we used to roam but it would remind us of when nothing really mattered what with student loans and treehouse homes we all would take the ladder
My name's BlurryFace and I care what you think
My name's BlurryFace and I care what you think
This is one of my favorite phenomena. It's why when I smell English tea rose I think of my great great aunt who was a nun. She always gave me soap that was that scent. It makes me think of writing her letters when I was 6 and how she told me that things only truly are valuable if you use them, like the soap she always gave me. I still buy tea rose perfume oil because of how I feel when I wear it.
this happened to me last week, thank you for making this video it made so much sense. Definitely agree that it brings back feelings of how you felt when you first smelt it rather than what you were doing at the time
One of the oldest memories I recalled by smell happened when I was working at a Radioshack, stocking shelves, and suddenly smelled something I hadn't smelled in nearly 20 years.
I immediately recalled "Shrinkidinks", a kids art / craft where you paint onto the plastic, put it in the oven, and it shrinks, causing more vibrant / denser colors.
Near as I could tell, I was around 3 when this memory occurred. I could even see the oven from a height of around 2' off the floor, the viewpoint of a toddler, I could barely see over the kitchen table.
Turns out I was stocking wiring insulators, which were made of shrinkable plastic tubing, made to be heated and shrink around the wires. Go figure!
So... sniffing all that glue back in college wasn't a good idea?
Smidge204 No it was! maybe, could be, eh.
Smidge204 Now if you sniff glue, you'll recall all of your' college education!
Smidge204 3:00 NOPE!
I'm happy to finally figure out why I have such vivid memories of my child hood when I smell the hot air around summer time. I used to go on vacations all the time when I was a kid. Since I got older all I do it work, kind of depressing actually.
It reminds me when the seasons change it always makes me think of things that happened during that time in the past.
I love these vids so much! Thank you for making them!
Sometimes even the smell of rain and spring weather triggers my memories.
this happens to me with a lot of smells that evoke some of the memories from my childhood, like the moment when i notice the smell of an eraser and i remember when i was erasing something on a paper in kindergarten or certain smells that I notice when i'm outside. It doesn't happen very often but when it does it takes you back to those years when everything seemed new to you.
Everything makes so much sense now!! I was wondering if it was just with me. Cos when I smell new books (the thick ones like encyclopaedia that has these glossy pages and they have a distinct scent) I have a vivid recollection of reading the science books my dad bought for me when I was like 8 or 9. And when I go into an air conditioned room, the cold feeling reminds me of when I used to watch national geographic/Cartoon Network/TLC etc. on Saturday mornings when I was in like year 7 or year 8 in an air-conditioned living room and my mom would be cooking in the other room.. I really want to remember those memories and I wish in the future, technology that can project my deepest memories onto a screen would be invented...
I always wondered about this concerning my smell because it seems to be the most accurate pertaining to my memory
I know I’m late to this video, but I was just downstairs getting a snack and it’s late at night, and I walked out of the pantry and I smelled something I haven’t smelled in years. My grandma’s old house. I used to go to her house every month because she lives in Massachusetts and I used to live in New York. I I haven’t been to her house in 6 years but I had tears in my eyes because I miss belong little and being so happy and going to her house and just having a great time.
Of course I do. You know me well, Hank.
I believe seasons have a specific smell and summer brings so many memories that often make me emotional, because of that one summer, two years ago that I fell in love with this one guy.
I seem to remember my childhood better than most folks, I think due to the various babysitters I was left with. They were old women, most of them, and they all had some rather distinguished smells in the homes. Recently I was wasting some time in a thrift store and came across an odor that instantly kicked in some childhood memories. I also immediately remembered they were associated with those old women who watched over me.
You guys cover the best stuff :)
The Thalamus looks like a grinning xenomorph in a trenchcoat flashing people.
juxtapose519 WTF?!:D
juxtapose519 I love you for pointing that out
I often experience the other way around, while trying to remember things, the smell of the environment comes to mind.
I really enjoy when that happens :)
I have conceptual memories back to when I was 2 years old. My first was sitting in a highchair and my dad called my mom on the phone from work and i wanted to tell him how my white rice i was eating was all sticking together.
My first feeling of nostalgia was when i was 6 yrs old hanging out with family friends and remembering stuff we did when I was 4 and missing those 'old' times. :)
I had a teacher that wore a different aftershave each year of high-school and kept a few bottles around from those years in storage. All of this just so later in life he could relive the memories of that time.
thats soo Fn bizarre...iv been having not just memories but almost what id call a flashback triggered by smells, n every single one of them is from when i was younger, around 10 or younger is exactly the age range id give it to like u mentioned iv been working on getting off suboxone for the past 2 years but iv just hit this weird plateau, suddenly my sense of smell came back n its been OVERwhelming to say the least its almost more than i can deal with it triggers memories SO hardcore i almost feel like im living them again n theyre all good memories but a lot r of ppl ill never b able to see again : / so its depressing as F
Although you cannot associate an entire concept to a smell, we should still be able to associate the smell to the thread of sequences which lead to an already chunked memory of that concept, as if using the smell as a concept marker. Something similar probably occurs when your told chewing the same flavored gum while studying and taking a test will help you remember more.
Well explained, thnak you.
I just love this end... so cute
Can't expect better explanation than this.
I just moved a lot of stuff out of my grandmas house and I kept a lot of things, all of them smell like her house and it brings back lots of memories. Jeez the feels.
Just a huge bummer that the smells will eventually fade
It's funny because I was literally thinking about how I could use it to help me study, very interesting video thank you
why do cats like boxes
YES!!
DuckGamez If you were small enough to fit inside of a box wouldn't you try to go inside of it?
DuckGamez Pure curiosity. MUST FEEL THE INSIDE OF THE BOX!
LiquoriceLover I remember when I was a kid we got some large package and I imagined it was a battle ship when I was in it
lalandleah Exactly! You can do anything with a box.
I usually imagined that boxes were doghouses or boats. I would also put them on my back and crawl around in the belief that I were a turtle.
Nice vid!
I'm only 21, and this happens to me quite often. Usually the smells invoke bittersweet nostalgic memories of my mid teen years, but on at least one occasion i've smelt something which has made me feel nostalgic for a time that has only just recently happened (relatively speaking).
I put perfume on my knuckles and when my teachers say this will be on a test or I think it's important I smell it and repeat it in my head and that helps me remember.
You may be on to something... I initially thought you'd use those knuckles to knock someone out and impose that scent within their mind so that they instinctively know to fear it haha.
iTouchin I thought the same.
Rachel Sullivan They mentioned something similar on the news not too long ago. They said to pick a different flavor gum you don't normally chew and chew it during the test review and while studying. Then while you take the test chew that same flavor of gum. Apparently the smell and taste should help you remember.
I have smells from my teen years that are just as powerful as the ones from when I was under eight. I think, as with songs, it takes decades for these connections to fully mature.
I got a new Mac just recently, and while we opened the case and everything I smelt a very familiar scent of my very first windows XP computer back when I was like 6 or something (17 now). I was actually surprised because I wasn't expecting to smell that from a Mac, but damn did it bring back good memories :D
When I usetoo get high these random memories pop up in my head with certain smells, and the memory is so strong it's like I been there before but I'm pretty sure I haven't because most of the memories are futuristic asf, if that's even a word
"Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young,
How come I'm never able to identify where it's coming from?"
Now you know, Twenty One Pilots.
There is something about people that make them good hosts. You sir are a good host. You have a nice voice, intonation, charisma. Other people that I have seen in SciShow, not as much.
The 4 notable smells that trigger nostalgia for me are:
.Campfires
.Brewed coffee, especially at a public coffee place, such as Starbucks.
.School buses. (I'm sure somebody will agree with me on these 3 smells.)
.The interior of the MAX (a Light Rail system) in Portland, OR, as well as the Portland Streetcar.
Taste too, every time eat a Hot Tamale candy it takes me back to when I watched Star Wars as a kid in 77 when I always bought them when watching movies
In high school I did a small group study to test if smells could be used to aid in study and memorization. There were three or four scents used, and two memory tests. One test was straight up recall of some picture cards, and the other was remembering the rules to a game I made up with those same cards.
The results showed that the grapefruit smell had the most positive results for aiding memory, while the peach scent had had the opposite reaction, causing people to forget more.
This happened to me this morning except that I remembered a smell I use to smell back in the day and then the memories of back in the dar came up
Scents of sisal always reminded me of my kindergarten and certain smells remind me of different video games I used to play decades ago
loved it
thank you so much!!! I have a seminar of this theme
this makes me think of to the moon
Pine brings me back to late 2014 when FNaF 2 came out. Nostalgia hits me very hard when I smell it 😌
When it happens to me legit flash back 10-15 years ago remembering
Some perfumes bring back memories... what a feeling..
Hank has so much swag
The smell of foot sweat always makes me think of point'n'click adventure games. I had some bad shoes one summer in the 90s that I spent playing a lot of those games...
I love it when this happens :-)
I came here because i literally remember hugging him and i can smell his perfume...
One day after ten years on my way to work, I passed the usual parking lot, and saw a car that gave me an instant feeling of Christmas. Several weeks later (approx. 5 weeks) I realized the color of the car was the same color green of the Christmas light bulbs of the exterior of my house during my childhood. It was a very unsettling yet enlightening experience.
I once had a very intense one of the with such a specific feeling that it's unbelievable.
When the pollen counts gets really heavy I used to believe I was allergic because i cried so much,but after reflecting on WHY I was crying it was because the smell of the flowers around my neighbor hood reminded me of the same flowers around an old B&B I would go to with my parents late in the summer.
Sometimes I'll start crying at work and with some investigation of my surroundings will notice an old song from my childhood or a certain smell.
Whenever I walk past a blooming honeysuckle bush I immediately feel deeply happy and relaxed. Only years later did I connect the dots - there was a honeysuckle bush in the backyard where I grew up and those happy summer days playing in the yard (yes, this was before Nintendo) were accompanied by the sweet smell of honeysuckle.
Knowing this, I can manipulate my mood by walking up to a honeysuckle and inhaling deeply :-)
Having different deodorants gives me different nostalgia feelings throughout the years...
That's why I always change them after a while
I love this way that smells trigger memories....
The "Black Ice" Little Trees car air freshener takes me back to when I drove my first car. It's pretty silly
I had one come up a couple of weeks ago . Was at the restaurant, and someone orders a chickern fried steak with mashed potato and white gravy. I all of the sudden I remember my grandmother making the best dinner when the waitress took it to the table behind us.
Just the other day I lit a match and I remembered camping up in the mountains.
That shirt is giving me a flash-back of that weird kid who ate the paste.
Amazing how one shampoo smell brought me back to 2018 for a sec
I once revisited a high school that I hadn't been to for twenty odd years, smelled the floor polish in the main hall and was overcome with an intense feeling of sadness. I had to get out of there before I had an anxiety attack.
Chlorine reminds me of swimming at a pool at the YMCA.
I love that concentrated, warm chlorine smell.
The end bit about not being able to use smells to aid memory recall in exams... In A Level psychology at school we did a unit on memory recall and we looked at some studies that showed people who memorised some information when smelling a certain smell, (in this case I think they tried peppermint, chocolate and something else), were able to recall the information better when tested later if they could smell the same smell while being tested, compared to control groups. And some scents had more effect on recall than others.
As an anosmic (no sense of smell) I find this so bizarre! But even without this I have really good memories from when I was little so at least I'm not missing out on that
I find the cologne/after shave I use to own triggers memories the most
I have mild synesthesia and this happens to me with sound rather than smell. Even a single note can immediately make me think of a song, and a word or two can make me think of a movie I haven't seen since kindergarten.
This Scishow made me remember about that Breaking Bad episode when Walter explained all that stuff.
I remember cleaning product smells from the preschool I went to lol!
Can you do an episode on Reiki? Both the history behind it and the evidence for/Against it. Please.
The fact that only songs can trigger my memories🤣
For me, the smell of paint and the mountains triggers a ton of memories.
sometimes a certain smell would take me back to when i was young/ how come im never able to identify where it's coming from?/ id make a candle out of it if i ever found it, try to sell it, never sell out of it, probably would only sell one.
I just smelled somewhat a ham and cheese smell in my room, I don’t know how or why that was but it took me back to elementary school with the ham and cheese white bread sandwiches they would hand out.
Remembering smells is most likely an evolutionary defense mechanism to ward us away from things that are toxic, or bring us closer to things that we need.
Oddly enough, there is a brand of hand soap that some schools use that always reminds me of my childhood...
Everytime i smell brand new tyres, I instantly remember getting my first bike, i also have a couple others and can also taste smells, although that can sometimes be a bad thing...
sometimes during the summer i smell something that reminds me of when i was young. i'm not sure what it is but i assume its flowers. the brain really is magnificent at times
I'v experienced this before! Back when I first played The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess I used to always play it in my basement, which had a certain smell to it. As I got older I didn't go down there as much, but when I did I would always think of Twilight Princess. I played tons of other games down there, but it was always that particular one that I would remember. Weird right?
All of the five human senses I think have the potential to bring back memories whether in a photographic type or another type.
My mum died when I was 8 and I have bottle of her perfume and whenever I smell it I remember her smell and her
I always wondered why seeing the brand of gum Juicy Fruit didn't bring up any memories but smelling it made me remember when I chewed it when I was on a plane when I was 6
Seems like this pathway is a two way street. I spent a lot of my childhood days hanging at my uncle's apartment that had it's own distinct smell. Then he moved and I never revisited the apartment (it was in another city). 20 years later when I got old enough to take a road trip there I wanted to drive by the place just to see it and as I got just in front of it the smell of that apartment "appeared" in my nose right there in the car.
Charcoal, gasoline, and firewood trigger some of my happiest times with my late father. I sometimes feel almost sad when I feel my tank because end up missing him.
The other day it triggered a memory of me being mortified I had to use the men's bathroom and he blocked the door until I got out so I wouldn't be more embarrassed.
That outro though. Hank/10
I mix grape and grapefruit and freeze it so I can enjoy the flavor while it reminds me of elementary school lunch that came with a pyramid carton of grape and grapefruit juice frozen inside to help alleviate the students from the hot California weather.
Smells are even more vivid for me, cause i remember my childhood more than my adult life. Maybe thats because i used to actually do stuff back then.....
Question, one nostril will allow more air to pass through so that it gets a wider range of particles it can react to, would this influence which parts of the brain interpret the information?
I just smelled this perfume that I used to use at school in the lockers and it triggered all my old memories
Tastes remind me of certain memories even more vividly than smells do - although of course the two intricately linked, so I imagine the mechanism is the same. The memory wears off though, if I smell or taste the thing in question too often as an adult. My mum used to give me carob bars when I was three or four, instead of chocolate, and when I found some carob powder (to make drinks with) as an adult I immediately bought some. At first the taste reminded me vividly of the shopping trips we used to take together, where she'd also buy me lychees and pistachios - but all three things are also no longer triggers, because I still eat them whenever I can now.
I also have several smell triggers for memories after my tenth birthday. There's a particular metallic-plaster-old dusty room smell I associate with music school, but I only started going to lessons when I was 12.
Yeah, once I figured that out I tried not to eat / drink as much of my "memory triggers", so the memory would stay as vivid. I think I've already ruined it for carob and skittles and a few other things, though. :/
Still, it makes me wonder which smells and tastes from now will bring me back way off in the future? :D
to me it happens that I can smell something today and it reminds me of the same situation a year later or less time. like if I use a perfume for some time and then I start using it a few moths later it reminds me if that specific time...