Is smelling more stress-relieving than ASMR? American study: smelling "good smells" may alleviate severe depression
Due to the shortening of daylight hours and the generally rainy weather in the north, many people are prone to “Seasonal Affective Disorder” (SAD) in winter; those with mental illness are more likely to develop “Major Depressive Disorder” (MDD), which seriously affects physical and mental health. . However, a recent study published in the authoritative journal “JAMA Network Open” shows that smelling familiar smells may help improve the condition of patients with severe depression.
Is smelling more stress-relieving than ASMR? American study: “Beautiful smells” may alleviate severe depression
The study was sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The study recruited 32 adults (26 women, 6 men) with major depression. The subjects had to complete a series of tests, such as testing their “Autobiographical Memory” (Autobiographical Memory, which refers to what happened to the individual, specific events and facts related to personal historical memory).
The research team used 24 items that can be presented as smells or word cues (such as “red wine smell” and the single word “red wine”) to detect the subjects’ reactions, and placed objects with irritating smells inside cotton balls. jar so that the subject could smell the cotton ball. Finally, subjects had to rate each retrieved memory, including emotional feelings, memory arousal, vividness, repeatability and other indicators.
The results showed that “smell” was more able to awaken the subjects’ past memories than “words”. In terms of memory arousal rate, the probability of being able to awaken memories in detail is 68.4%, while text prompts are only 52.1%; 71.6% of subjects evoke positive memories due to smelling the smell, and only 28.4% are evoked negative memories. In addition, the time, degree of arousal, and clarity of memories awakened through smell are higher, and only the degree of repetition is the same as that of text prompts.
Does smell help awaken memories? Expert: More realistic than hearing and vision
Study author Dr. Kymberly D. Young pointed out that in fact, the subjects were only able to correctly identify the smell 29% of the time, but this has nothing to do with whether their ability to “autobiographical memory” can be triggered. Despite relatively poor odor identification performance, the odor cues in the study elicited higher recall arousal rates, suggesting that odor cues may directly stimulate recall pathways in the brain rather than through language-mediated recall pathways.
Dr. Young said that memories prompted by smells are more vivid and exciting than memories prompted by words, helping them recall memories of specific events (for example, a quilt evokes a happy time in childhood), rather than general memories ( They used to sleep under the same quilt), and the memories triggered by the smell are more immersive and real.
Olfaction therapy could help relieve severe depression? Changes in 3 brain regions may be key factors
Dr. Young believes that previous research has shown that improving autobiographical memory in patients with severe depression may help reduce depressive symptoms. Now this study uses a simpler, easier-to-implement odor cue to directly improve the specificity of patients’ memories in a single trial. Whether this experiment can be used to develop a novel memory-specific training will be one of the general directions for future research.
“We need to understand the neural mechanism of odor cues, especially the ‘amygdala’. We know that feelings such as vision and hearing need to pass through the optic thalamus of the brain before they can be transmitted to the cortex of the brain; however, the sense of smell does not need to go through the optic thalamus and can be directly It is conveyed to the olfactory cortex, hippocampus and amygdala, which also explains why smelling a specific smell is more likely to trigger a specific memory than seeing it with your eyes or hearing it with your ears!”
Dr. Young pointed out that the amygdala controls emotions and can distinguish likes and dislikes of smells; the hippocampus is responsible for processing memory. Therefore, if people with severe depression can smell the “good smell” they subjectively identify, it may help to recall the good memories of the past and alleviate their symptoms. However, further trials are needed to confirm whether olfactory cues can be used as an intervention for patients with severe depression.
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Further reading:
Can “ASMR” help stabilize mood and relieve anxiety? Experimental discovery: Brain waves are altered
