The Sweet Smell Of Childhood Memories

The smell of the grandparents’ house, the perfume of mother, the scent of rain on the wet earth … Childhood is etched in the memory from the sense of smell. We tell you how and why.

If you were asked to recall the last trip you made, visual images and sequences of events would possibly come to your mind. However, if you try to bring memories of your childhood to the present, these will appear in the form of emotions, diffuse but intense sensations. And is that the smell of childhood memories is indelible.

We have all experienced it: we are walking down the street and, suddenly, a smell takes us to the past in such a vivid way that we feel we have traveled in time. Therefore, although you may not have stopped to think about it, the olfactory stimuli that your little one is receiving now are establishing emotions that will accompany him for life.

Smells, memories and emotions

There are two interesting facts to keep in mind regarding memories. The first of these is that, although we are an eminently visual species, during our first years of life, memories are established mainly through smell. Babies already use this sense to recognize the mother and look for her; and, up to 10 years of age, the weight of smells in the formation of memories is extremely important.

But, in addition, the memories evoked by smells have a much more emotional component. When you remember a visual scene from your past or a conversation you had, you recall facts and events. It is a more accurate and objective information retrieval.

On the other hand, when someone passes by with a perfume that is familiar to you, you feel immersed in sensations and emotional states. At this point you do not remember so much what happened at that particular moment, but the intimate and personal perceptions that you experienced with that smell.

The emotional brain

That is, in our brain powerful associations are established between smells and internal states. In this way, when we perceive that same olfactory stimulus, we are overwhelmed by the emotion that previously accompanied that smell.

But what makes this type of memoir so characteristic? Why are smells capable of taking us on an emotional journey back to childhood? Well, this happens because the sense of smell is strongly related to the emotional brain.

Before reaching the cerebral cortex, stimuli from the sense of smell pass through two main brain areas, the amygdala and the hippocampus. These regions are strongly associated with emotions and memory. For this reason, smells permeate and fix in our memories the emotion that we are experiencing at that moment.

And this occurs much more prominently in children, since smell is the main sense they use to relate to the world in the first stage of their life. In this way, smells allow us to access childhood memories that, otherwise, it would be difficult for us to recover, since it is common to keep few memories of our childhood.

The sweet smell of childhood memories

For all the above, infants will keep memories of their early years strongly associated with emotional states. Thus, in the future, certain characteristic smells will lead them back to those happy years.

Mom’s perfume will always remind you of the warm and comforting feeling of her hugs. The smell of freshly baked cookies will make you relive the innocence and carelessness with which you stopped playing, momentarily, to go to have a snack.

Likewise, the scent of summer rain wetting the ground will activate your memories of those familiar days in the country. And the smell of clay will almost inevitably help him to relive his complicity with his siblings while they spent long hours playing pretend.

All these memories will invade you at the least expected moment when, out of nowhere, a pleasantly familiar smell permeates your senses. But, in addition, they will constitute powerful anchors to revive those emotions when they need them most.

In the future, when your child needs to feel loved, safe, protected or happy again, he will only have to light the same scented candle that now presides over your living room. All you have to do is cook that dish that your grandmother now prepares for you after your summer afternoons playing in the pool. The smell of childhood memories is a treasure that always accompanies us, a resource that we will always have at our fingertips.