I tried to do a bit of research online on how scent therapy is used in alzheimer's patients and also for people who have the disability where they cannot "recognize" faces (I don't remember the name of the disability).
I'm just wondering if any of you have heard of scent therapy being used. Most of the articles I have read have talked about using scent to relieve stress and tension, but not in the role scent plays with memory. Considering how strongly scent is associated with memory, it's hard to believe that there haven't been more studies done on using scent to stimulate memory or even attempts to use it to slow down the progression of alzheimers.
Along those lines, I also tried to look up the disability some people have where they cannot recognize faces. Difficult, since I can't remember the name of the disability. Since, however, scent is recognized in a different part of the brain than facial recognition, would it not be possible to somehow train people with that disability to recognize the smell of the people who they most closely associate with?
The reason I started looking this sort of thing up is that I am a bit of a scent-aholic. I get very visceral memories from certain scents, and have been known to use perfumes as a way of recording events. Dewberry perfume from The Body Shop is a trip to Florida when I was 15 years old; White Musk is a party I went to in university, sandalwood is a trip to Peru - more specifically, it's looking out a certain window at a mountain in Peru; the combination of a humid day, the smell of camel cigarettes, an onion bagel and fresh orange juice and suddenly I am *in* NYC in 1997; there is a certain perfume that reminds me of meeting Steve in Toronto; another that reminds me of him visiting in Texas; yet another that just reminds me of him to the point that if I smell it, I turn around looking for him; there's a perfume that puts me in Holland on a snowy day the day after the Oscars in 2004.
The point is, we know scent is strongly associated with memory. The problem is, we are getting rid of strong scents, whether it be perfume or otherwise. We use sprays to get rid of the smell in a room. We ban people from wearing perfume, or even scented lotion or scented shampoo, in the work place. We are neutralizing our world of smells, good and bad. It makes me wonder if, in future, even if we do develop scent therapy for people with alzheimer's, or other recognition disabilities, will it do any good?
I guess my questions are:
Can scent therapy be used in medicine?
Can neutralizing the natural smells in our world be a good thing?
Are perfumes really so terrible?
Just how closely do you associate scent with memory? Are we losing this ability?
What role does the nose play in the human world?
What are the cultural differences in what is acceptable when it comes to smells?
etc etc etc
Basically, I just want to talk about our memories, things that smell and how we might better utilize our noses whether it be in medicine or otherwise.
I wasn't going to start this thread at first, as I thought that it wouldn't get many, if any, responses. The thing is, people are generally very emotional when it comes to smells. A bad fart can drive us out of a room. A great smell can draw us into one (popcorn anyone?). The way a person smells can attract or repel us. The same smell can do both to different people. We may not think that scent plays an important role in our lives, but it does generate very primal and immediate reactions from us. It may not be the most intellectual subject for a discussion, but it is, at a very basic level, human.
So...
what smells?