Smells Hack Our Memory

The Forming of a Memory

Before we truly remember anything, it starts as an experience. It is a moment when our senses (sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch) interact with the world around us. Those signals are then shuffled into our short-term memory. 

Our short-term memory is delicate. When the senses feed data to the brain, it goes to a holding area in the prefrontal cortex called short-term or working memory. In this waiting room, information will live for about thirty seconds before it is either whisked away toward the hippocampus, which facilitates the journey to long-term…