Sleep, Odor, & Memory
Jayson Emery
German scientists used medical students as their guinea pigs, having them play a computer version of a common memory game: They turned over pairs of cards to find each one's match. Some played in a rose-scented room. Later that night, while they were in a deep stage of sleep known as slow-wave sleep, researchers gave them another whiff of roses. The next day, the rose-scented sleepers remembered the locations of those cards better than people who didn't get a whiff - they answered correctly 97 percent of the time compared with 86 percent.In no other sleep stage was there a difference in memory performance.
Interestingly, when asked to do a different type of memory task (numeric and finger-tapping), the subjects' performance was unchanged with any odor in any stage of sleep. The scientists theorized that since there are different types of memory, the numeric memory task must be stored in an area of the brain that is unaffected by smell.
What interests me about this study was that I had learned that we cannot smell in our sleep; at least not consciously, which is why smoke alarms have a loud noise associated with them. However, this study would indicate that there may be an unconscious stimuli for smell in sleep.
Related Topics: Technorati Tags: sleep, memory, odor, health-and-wellness
Labels: sleep
3 Comments:
I didn't realize we couldn't consciously smell during sleep, maybe it depends on the level of sleep because I remember when I lived with my folks, I could smell my dad's coffee before I was actually awake. Maybe during the light stages of sleep, smells can have more of an effect.
That is interesting about the memory. I'm very interested in memory things like that because I had radiation in 1995 and ever since I've had an awful short term memory, but there are some things that are short term I don't have a problem with; that makes sense to me that there are different areas of the brain that could control different types of short term memory. Very interesting.
I had "complex partial seizures" two years ago - I'm almost 69. I'm on a drug for them now and I don't have any more, but they did hurt my memory in several different ways. Ofcourse I wonder if I may have the beginnings of domencia. Any answers would be appreciated.
Anonymous:
Try posting your question on our Epilepsy message board.
Thank you!
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