Odor-Based Context Dependent Memory

Larsson, Maria; Arshamian, Artin; Kärnekull, Stina Cornell

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-26932-0_42

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…In addition, hedonic valence is the primary perceptual feature of an odor and the first aspect used to discriminate and describe it [ 29 ]. Due to this intimate connection between the olfactory and limbic systems, the sense of smell highly influences everyday life [ 30 , 31 ]; odors affect food selection [ 32 ], mood [ 22 , 33 , 34 ], behavior [ 35 , 36 ], memory [ 37 ], and social interactions [ 38 – 40 ]. Despite the preferential link between odors and emotions, only a few studies investigated olfactory perception in individuals with alexithymia (for a review see [ 41 ]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alexithymia modulates the attitudes towards odors but not the olfactory abilities or the affective reactions to odors

et al. 2023

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Although emotion and olfaction are closely linked, only a few studies have investigated olfactory processing in alexithymia, a condition characterized by altered emotional processing. These results do not allow comprehensive conclusions on whether individuals with alexithymia present lower olfactory abilities or only altered affective reactions and awareness of odors. Three pre-registered experiments were conducted to clarify this relation. We assessed olfactory functions, the affective qualities of odors, the awareness of odors, the attitudes towards them, and the ability to form olfactory images in the mind. Bayesian statistics were used to assess differences between low, medium and high alexithymia groups, and Linear Mixed Models (LMMs) were applied to investigate the modulation of the affective and cognitive components of alexithymia. We observed that individuals with a high level of alexithymia presented the same olfactory abilities, and did not show differences in their rating of odors compared to individuals with low alexithymia levels, while they reported lower levels of social and common odor awareness and a more indifferent attitude towards odors. Olfactory imagery was not affected by alexithymia level, and the affective and cognitive components of alexithymia, when considered separately, modulated olfactory perception differently. Learning more about olfactory perception in individuals with alexithymia leads to a better understanding of how alexithymia impacts the perception of hedonic stimuli coming from different sensory modalities. Our results imply that treatment goals for alexithymia should be the enhancement of the conscious perception of odors, supporting the use of mindfulness-based protocols in the alexithymia treatment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alexithymia modulates the attitudes towards odors but not the olfactory abilities or the affective reactions to odors

et al. 2023

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“…Among sensory modalities that could be used as sensory context, the sense of smell is the one that fit best with the idea of "context"; indeed, even though most of the time, we are not consciously aware of different odors, almost every space or situation represents its own specific odor. At present, many studies have provided evidence that explicit or implicit odor perception can affect for example mood (Zucco et al, 2009), behavior (Chebat and Michon, 2003;Cecchetto et al, 2017), and memory (Larsson et al, 2017). This ability has been related to the unique anatomical organization of the olfactory system and its close anatomical connections to the limbic system which is involved in emotion and memory information processing (Gottfried and Zald, 2005;Lundstr€ om et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When to collect resting-state data: The influence of odor on post-task resting-state connectivity

et al. 2019

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“…Odors are effective contextual cues in the recollection or recognition of information experienced in the recent or remote past (Larsson, Arshamian, & Kärnekull, ). When the same odor is presented at encoding and retrieval, such odor context facilitates recollection of the information compared to when the odor context is changed between encoding and retrieval (Ball, Shoker, & Miles, ; Cann & Ross, ; Herz, ; Parker & Gellatly, ; Parker, Ngu, & Cassaday, ; Wiemers, Sauvage, & Wolf, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human body odor increases familiarity for faces during encoding‐retrieval task

Cecchetto

Fischmeister

Gorkiewicz

et al. 2020

Human Brain Mapping

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Odors can increase memory performance when presented as context during both encoding and retrieval phases. Since information from different sensory modalities is integrated into a unified conceptual knowledge, we hypothesize that the social information from body odors and faces would be integrated during encoding. The integration of such social information would enhance retrieval more so than when the encoding occurs in the context of common odors. To examine this hypothesis and to further explore the underlying neural correlates of this behavior, we have conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which participants performed an encoding‐retrieval memory task for faces during the presentation of common odor, body odor or clean air. At the behavioral level, results show that participants were less biased and faster in recognizing faces when presented in concomitance with the body odor compared to the common odor. At the neural level, the encoding of faces in the body odor condition, compared to common odor and clean air conditions, showed greater activation in areas related to associative memory (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), odor perception and multisensory integration (orbitofrontal cortex). These results suggest that face and body odor information were integrated and as a result, participants were faster in recognizing previously presented material.

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Odor-Based Context Dependent Memory

Cited by 5 publications

References 45 publications

Alexithymia modulates the attitudes towards odors but not the olfactory abilities or the affective reactions to odors

Alexithymia modulates the attitudes towards odors but not the olfactory abilities or the affective reactions to odors

When to collect resting-state data: The influence of odor on post-task resting-state connectivity

Human body odor increases familiarity for faces during encoding‐retrieval task

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