Fragrance, Mood, and Memory: Choosing a Perfume

Text by Lindsy van Gelder

Your beloved grandmother wore Chanel No. 19; your favorite teacher loved Opium; your best friend in high school was crazy for CK Be. And today, whenever you get a whiff of any of them, your mind does Proustian backflips down the tunnel of memory. Instantly, you're happy.

That's because scent takes a unique route to our brains, says cognitive neuroscientist Johan Lundstrom of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. 

"Every other sense goes from the sensory organ -- the eyes, the ears, the tongue -- into the brain stem and to the thalamus, the switchboard of the brain, and then gets processed," Lundstrom says. But smell leapfrogs instead to the limbic system, which includes the amygdala (the seat of emotion) and the hippocampus (which governs memory).

Scents and Sensibility

Certain scents provoke nearly universal responses, at least within specific cultures, and no one knows exactly why or how this is so. 

Some researchers believe the reactions are triggered by early childhood associations. But a study earlier this year at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, indicated a physiological basis for responses to jasmine (long reputed to be a natural antianxiety scent). Mice who inhaled it stopped racing around and sat quietly in the corners of their cages. 

Jasmine enhances the mood of human subjects so much that they knock down 23 percent more pins when they bowl with the scent in the air, according to a study at the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago. 

Odors can also affect perception: Men in one foundation study guessed that women wearing the scent of pink grapefruit were six years younger than they were in reality; in another study, men thought women wearing spicy florals were 12 pounds lighter.

Emotional Manipulation

The psychological powers of scent have been wielded for centuries by alchemists, herbal healers, and perfumers. (Marie Antoinette is said to have gone to the scaffold with several vials of her favorite Houbigant scent tucked into her bosom for courage.) 

But our emotions can be manipulated only up to a point, because the fragrance experience is more complicated than simply pushing button A to get Pavlovian reaction B. Personal memories in particular can override more common associations, Lundstrom says. 

Lavender and vanilla are known for their calming properties, but if your high-strung mother wore them, they may never feel tranquil to you. Lundstrom himself often works with phenylethyl alcohol, a compound that smells like roses. Most people find it lovely and romantic, "but I now associate the scent of rose with long hours in the lab."

By the same token, we respond positively to all kinds of olfactory madeleines that trigger pleasant memories. Perfumer Alexandra Balahoutis of Strange Invisible Perfumes, based in Venice, California, once concocted a fragrance meant to evoke a young woman's trip to Italy. 

In addition to native plants like Sicilian orange blossom, Parma violets, and basil, it contains tobacco and musk. "I wanted to encapsulate not just Italy or Florence, but the experience of discovering them -- being a young girl and being delighted and corrupted by a way of life, smoking cigarettes and drinking espresso."

As seen on Wholeliving