A Whiff of Scented Air Can Boost Your Memory Power
If you’re wondering whether you’re reading right, then let us confirm that you are. Researchers are here to state that a sudden whiff of air carrying fragrance when brought close to a sleeping person during a particular sleep state helps in boosting the memory levels of the person. Now, this is not to say that any odor at anytime during the sleeping hours can help in boosting the memories of people.
German scientists conducted a test on medical students to confirm the same. The students were made to play a computer memory game of cards where they wee supposed to find the match.
Some of these medical students were made to play the game in a rose-scented room. That night, while the students were in deep sleep state called the “slow wave sleep”, researchers gave them a whiff of the rose again.
Next morning, it was seen that the rose-scented sleepers who received the whiff of the roses at night remembered the locations of the cards better than those who did not get the whiff of rose at night. It was also observed that the rose-scented sleepers answered correctly almost 97% of the time as compared to the rest who answered correctly only 86% of the time.
It was also observed that students exposed to the odor during a lighter state of sleep known as the REM (Rapid Eye Movement), there was no boost in the memory power.
Neurobiologists from the University of Lubek also confirmed that other tricks also didn’t help in aiding the memory levels of the students. For instance, neither did any finger tapping sequence help or any scent to remember the location of cards.
When later, a numerical finger tapping test was conducted to observe memory skills while the brain rested and consolidated the cards according to their locations, the odor didn’t help enough to remember the card locations.
So anyone, say experts, who gets the whiff of a particular odor that dates back to a particular event like Grandma’s apple pie, knows exactly how the whiff of scented air and memory are connected.
As numerous studies have revealed earlier that how essential sleep is for memory, this one suggests how essential it is for a whiff of scented air to enhance your memory power. So wish you always have a scented night’s dream from now on!