REM Sleep and Memory

Have you ever fallen asleep with the television on and then had a dream that you were part of the show? Or gone to sleep after a big fight with your significant other and then had a dream where you were being chased?

Scientists have known for a long time that there’s some kind of relationship between our dreams and the sounds and sensations happening around us and most of us have had a dream where some external stimulus; a sight, a sound, a memory; seemed to be an influence. And surprisingly with different smells, it can influence our dreams, too.  When researchers gave dreaming subjects whiffs of rose scent, the subjects reported rosier dreams. The scent of rotten eggs, on the other hand, provoked unpleasant dreams, the study found.

While in REM sleep, the phase where dreams are most likely to occur, each woman in the study was tested three times. Once with phenyl ethyl alcohol, a scent resembling roses; once with hydrogen sulfide, which mimics the sulfurous stench of rotten eggs; and once with a neutral scent. A minute after being exposed to the odor, they were woken up and interviewed about their dreams. What was most interesting was that the women reported that the dreams themselves were not necessarily good or bad. No one had terrible nightmares or dreams about jetting to Hawaii with George Clooney. But the odors very much influenced how the dreams made the women feel. The researchers discovered that upon waking, those who smelled a pleasant scent reported having had pleasant dreams, and those who smelled something bad reported that their dreams corresponded. Although the smells didn’t seem to alter the content of their dreams, it did affect how they felt about them.

Scent Stimuli

In this article, I will explore how humans perceive smell, and how it stimulates our brain.
What is the best sense to arouse our memories?
  Some would answer visual. According to recent scientific studies, memory has direct correlation to the hippocampus. In addition, there is  a control function of  smell sensory that is closely related with the Limbic system. The disclosure further reveals the physiological mechanisms of human memory and brings a greater explanation of how the brain strengthens memories under olfactory stimulation.
Why does smell bring back Memories? Here is how it works: After an odor molecule enters the nose and is recognized by the olfactory sensors (receptors inside your nose that have millions of nerve cells), the signals are  immediately sent to the Limbic system. The olfactory system processes information on both the limbic system(which controls emotions, memory and behavior) and cortex(control of conscious thought) as they work in concert, they afect our memories. It is said that people can identify about 10,000 different scents. Olfactory memory is constructed based on on personal experiences. The sense of smell is the leading sense humans
use as a  memory tool and it also triggers our emotions. The way memories are recorded is still unown. Nonetheless, some doctors use scent as therapy to evoke past memories in  memory loss patients. We should make use of the function of smell, to experience our world and enjoy life to the fullest.

Scent Perspective

      A scent can trigger a significant amount of memories, stimulate people's moods and affect their daily routines.  When you first smell a scent, you connect it to an event, a thing, a person or a moment. Have you ever-smelled fresh baked cookies on top of a bakery counter and immediately had a flashback of your mom's home baked cookies? This may simply make you feel content. However, soft scents like lilies may disturb you without your knowing why. This is one of the reasons why not everyone enjoys the same smells. Smell is just like taste, they're a chemical sense detected by sensory cells called chemoreceptors.
      In recent years, branding marketers are using smell to persuade and influence consumers to buy products. Their marketing strategy is to influence our brain so that we affiliate some of our most craved feelings and wants to their brand. After sight, scent is one of the most powerful senses because our sense of smell is controlled through our olfactory system which is the strongest sense linked to memory.  This triggers your brain that instantaneously brings a flood of memories and powerful responses. People recall smells with sixty four percent accuracy after a year. (Compare that to the visual recall of photos, which sinks to about fifty percent after about 3 months.) Marketer's and business branding experts know that one of the fastest, most powerful ways to advertise is by leveraging our sense of smell. 

Limbic System: The memory bank. (Query)

How do we remember smells and associate them to memories? Surprisingly, the Limbic system of the brain is the conduit for both memory and Olfactory recognition. The components of the Limbic System that relate to memory are the Amygdala, Hippocampus, and the Olfactory Cortex.
                                                        

          The Amygdala acts as the filter for memories and the Hippocampus expedites memories to the appropriate areas of the brain for long term storage. The Olfactory Cortex identifies scents.  In her dissertation, Kriistina Kompus found that there were different neurological pathways to relate smells and memories. Her research pointed that the memory did not necessarily have to be traumatic. She also gathered  data that the brain relates memory and smell in milliseconds through MRI’s and Electroencephalography. But how can an artist use this to their advantage?
There have been many attempts to exploit the limbic system for advertising purposes. According to Discovery Health, “…smells would not trigger memories if it weren't for conditioned responses.” Bluntly, in order to remember an image, we have to associate an image  with either a distinct smell that people can relate to; Such as a child remembers their first pool experience upon smelling chlorine. This is hit or miss. What kind of smells would be produced for specific images? …and if the scents were to work, would the ethos have a negative reaction to the image?
In recent advertising campaigns, Got Milk had a specialized strip scented with freshly baked cookies made to install in buses around a city. Their intention was for their target ethos to relate freshly baked cookies to purchasing more milk. The campaign was a success as well as a failure. The target ethos were divided into those who thought the ads were “corporate manipulation” and those who didn’t relate the smell of cookies to milk. What can we gather from these examples? We have to first analyze where we would have our artwork. Obviously, the marketing perspective is hit or miss. But what if we presented our art in a gallery? Our chances to create a positive memory from our art with smell would go up exponentially.