I am sure your significant other remembers the scent of your fragrance from your wedding day very well. It’s been noted (pun intended) to wear a perfume that your spouse has never smelled on you before. Smell is one of the strongest senses directly linked to your memory. If you want to evoke the memory of one the most monumental days of your life; maybe for your first date night after your wedding day, mist your body with your wedding day fragrance (mine is Jadore) and let the power of your perfume’ do its magic. FunFact: There is virtually no difference between perfume and parfum. "Parfum" is the French term for perfume, so they can be used interchangeably. But these should not be confused with eau de parfum, which is a different product. The difference is simply the amount or concentration of oils in the fragrance. Eau de parfum has a higher concentration than eau de toilette, making it a stronger fragrance. There is also pure perfume, which has the highest concentration, and eau de cologne, which has the lowest concentration of oils.Fragrances are comprised of many different scents, these scents are called "notes."Top notes are very light and last just a few minutes (5-10 minutes). Middle notes become apparent in about 15 minutes after application. These can last up to an hour or more. Bottom notes are the heavier ingredients. These last the longest, usually for several hours, which may be the best choice for your wedding day.
Why Do Smells Trigger Strong Memories?
The delicious scent of baking bread wafting out from the open doors of a nearby bakery can act like a time portal, instantly sweeping you from a busy street in New York to a tiny cafe in Paris that you visited years ago. Scent particles, in general, can revive memories that have been long forgotten. But why do smells sometimes trigger powerful memories, especially emotional ones? The short answer, the brain regions that maneuver smells, memories and emotions are very much intertwined. In fact, the way that your sense of smell is wired to your brain is unique among your senses. A scent is a chemical particle that floats in through the nose and into the brain's olfactory bulbs, where the sensation is first processed into a form that's readable by the brain. Brain cells then carry that information to a tiny area of the brain called the amygdala, where emotions are processed, and then to the adjoining hippocampus, where learning and memory formation take place. Scents are the only sensations that travel such a direct path to the emotional and memory centers of the brain.
All other senses first travel to a brain region called the thalamus, which acts like a "switchboard," relaying information about the things we see, hear or feel to the rest of the brain, said John McGann, an associate professor in the psychology department of Rutgers University in New Jersey. But scents bypass the thalamus and reach the amygdala and the hippocampus in a "synapse or two," he said. That results in an intimate connection between emotions, memories and scents. This is why memories triggered by scents as opposed to other senses are "experienced as more emotional and more evocative," said Rachel Herz, an adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University in Rhode Island and author of the book "The Scent of Desire" (Harper Perennial, 2018). A familiar but long-forgotten scent can even bring people to tears, she added
The emotion of scent
Scents are "really special" because "they can bring back memories that might otherwise never be recalled," Herz said. By comparison, the everyday sight of familiar people and places won't prompt you to remember very specific memories. For example, walking into your living room is a repeated stimuli, something you do over and over again, so the action is unlikely to recall a specific moment that took place in that room. On the flip side, "if there's a smell that's connected to something that happened way in your past and you never run into that smell again, you may never remember what that thing was," Herz added. Typically, when a person smells something that's connected to a meaningful event in their past, they will first have an emotional response to the sensation and then a memory might follow. Sometimes, the memory won't ever resurface; the person might feel the emotion of something that happened in the past but won't remember what they experienced, Herz said. "And this is unlike any of our other sensory experiences." In other words, you likely wouldn't see something and feel an emotion but fail to recall the memory connected to that sight and feeling.
Whats some your your favorite fragrances? Or better yet, what perfume did you wear on your wedding day? Feel free to comment below, and please share with someone that could use this info. Merci d'avoir pris le temps de lire. XO!
