'Scent therapy' helps unlock memories in people with depression, trial finds

People with depression may have trouble remembering certain memories about their lives, such as a dinner party with friends or a visit to their favorite coffee shop. A small trial suggests that ‘aroma therapy’ may help people with depression unlock hard-to-access autobiographical memories (AM).

The trial is described in the Journal on Tuesday (February 13) JAMA network openincluding 32 adults major depressive disorder They then used familiar scents such as coffee grounds, orange, and Vicks VapoRub to prompt participants to recall specific memories. So, for example, when offered coffee, a person might not think generally about the local cafe they frequent, but rather about meeting their siblings for a latte on a particular spring afternoon.

Previous studies have attempted similar memory tests Instead, words and pictures were used as cues to participants. So in a new experiment, the scientists switched between scents and words as cues to see whether certain types of triggers were more effective at evoking people’s autobiographical memories. The results showed that participants recalled more specific memories when scent cues were used.

Related: How does the brain store memories?

“I was surprised that no one had thought of using scent cues to investigate memory recall in depressed patients until now,” said the lead study author. kimberly youngAssociate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh said: statement.The scent is Known to cause strong, often emotional memories in a unique way that doesn’t necessarily occur with other stimuli.

“The olfactory system is the only sensory system that has direct, ultra-fast access to the brain’s memory and emotional centers.” michael leonProfessor Emeritus of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the new study. told NBC News. “All the other senses have to take a side route to get there.”

So, in theory, harnessing smell could be a good strategy to rewire emotional centers in depression and unlock memories that make them easier to recall. “Improving memory can improve problem solving, emotional regulation, and other functional problems commonly experienced by people with depression,” Young said.

This happens when: memorypeople with depression are stigmatized. In the direction of classifying individual events into broad categories. and overgeneralize the emotions associated with those events. For example, a person may recall his “time spent at university” as a category and portray that entire chapter of his life as negative, without being able to retrieve individual positive memories of that time. .

This memory bias locks people into negative thought patterns that are difficult to break. For example, it can be more difficult to debunk negative, overgeneralized thoughts about yourself, such as “I’m a failure.”

This trial sought to disrupt these patterns by helping people recall specific memories. Study participants were asked to recall positive or negative memories after sniffing her 24 odor samples from glass bottles or hearing words that described those odors. The smells ranged from lavender to cumin to whiskey to cough syrup to shoe cream.

“In the verbal cue condition, 52% of memories were specific, whereas in the odor cue condition, 68% of memories were specific,” the study authors wrote in their paper. “Furthermore, we found that these AMs were rated as more arousing and vivid when recalled compared to verbally stimulated memories,” the researchers noted.

The team plans to test it with additional brain scans in the future to see how it works. AmygdalaImportant emotional processing hubs in the brain respond to treatment.

“We hope this initial study will spur larger studies in more diverse samples, including healthy control participants, i.e. people without depression, to further explore and explain these associations. “We hope that,” the researchers concluded.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice.

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