The Natural Patch Co.

You’ve probably had the experience of encountering a smell that instantly evokes a strong memory or feeling. Maybe a waft of perfume reminds you of your grandmother, or the scent of motor oil takes you back to hanging out with your dad in the garage while he worked on his car.

Our sense of smell is directly wired to the brain’s centers of memory and emotion. Cells inside the nose detect smells in our environment, and send information to the brain, via the olfactory nerve. (We also have a cluster of cells the top of the throat that detect scents from the food we consume, and pass that information along the same olfactory channel to the brain.) The information about smell does immediately to the limbic system of the brain, which includes regions like the amygdala that control emotional reactions and memory.