Why Scents Evoke Nearly Instant & Highly Robust Memories: The Science Behind Scented Gifts

Behind every meaningful experience, there is a scent that will invoke that memory, like nothing else will. Why?

When we smell a scent, the olfactory bulb (the brain's smell center) processes the information. It sends it directly to the amygdala (emotion processing) and the hippocampus (memory formation).

All the other senses start processing the experiential information at the site of the sensory organ, send to the thalamus for refinement and integration with other information and sources, then relays the sensory information the cortex (reasoning, logic, and integration) and then to the amygdala and hippocampus for emotion processing and memory formation.

It is thought that the reason scents have a straight path to emotion and memory processing is the importance of smell to survival (e.g., detecting danger, food, or mates). The ability of a scent to rapidly invoke emotional and memory-based responses to survival needs is the widely accepted understanding for the unique wiring of the olfactory system.