Scientists at the University of California, Irvine, ran a special experiment with older adults aged 60 to 85. They wanted to see if certain smells could help improve memory.
These adults used a machine called a diffuser that released different smells while they slept. Each night for six months, the machine gave off a different smell for two hours.
The Amazing Results People who got the full strength of these scents did much better on memory tests! They scored 226% higher than the group that got only a little bit of the smell.
And that’s not all. Scans of their brains showed that an important pathway, which usually gets weak with age, looked better in the group that got the full smells. People also said they slept better.
- Why Scents Matter For a long time, scientists have known that our sense of smell is tied to our memory. People who can’t smell well are sometimes more likely to get certain diseases, like Alzheimer’s.
There’s even some new research that shows people who lost their sense of smell because of COVID might have worse memory after.
Before, some researchers tried using many different smells to help people with dementia. But that’s hard to do every day, especially for someone who’s already having memory problems.
That’s why the scientists in this new study decided to try just seven different scents and let people smell them while they slept.
Cynthia Woo, one of the researchers, said this made it much easier for people to use the smells every day.
The Bigger Picture
Smells can bring back memories. They’re directly connected to the part of our brain that handles memory.
So, if our sense of smell gets worse, our memory might too. But there haven’t been many ways to help people who lose their sense of smell.
Now, with these results, scientists are excited. They want to see if this smell technique can help people who already have memory problems. And they hope more scientists will study how scents can be used to help our memory.
If you care about dementia, please read studies about how the Mediterranean diet could protect your brain health, and Vitamin B supplements could help reduce dementia risk.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies that high-fiber diet could help lower the dementia risk, and these antioxidants could help reduce dementia risk.
The study was published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
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