Why does the hint of certain smells instantly transport you back to
childhood? It may be because the first smell you associate with an
object is given privileged status in the brain. Yaara Yeshurunand colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel,
showed volunteers an object such as a chair or pencil that was unlikely
to already beassociated with a smellat the same time as exposing them to an odour or sound. An
hour-and-a-half later, they showed them the same object with a different
odour or sound. |





