For memories of Christmases past, swap that peppermint candy cane for a glass of warm mulled wine with a cinnamon kick! In Bianca Grohmann's and David Thomas' impressive sounding 'Brand Memory effects of Retronasal Olfaction' they discuss how research has demonstrated that the scent of cinnamon has a greater power to help stimulate memory recall than peppermint.
'Retronasal Olfaction occurs during eating and drinking, and combines with the sense of taste, audition, and somatosensory perception of texture and fattiness to form flavour experience (Duffy, Cain, & Ferris, 1999).'
The sensation of flavour occurs through a combination of receptors in the mouth and nose being stimulated. When we eat, a majority of the flavour we experience is perceived by through our sense of smell. The area in our brain that processes scent also controls memory and emotion which means there is a strong link between them. Grohmann and Thomas explain:
'In a memory task, Zoladz and Raudenbush (2005) compared retronasally [which means through eating, drinking or in this case chewing ]administered odorants and found that peppermint increases performance on memory tasks over a no gum and no flavor gum condition, but was consistently outperformed by cinnamon odorant.'
Read 'Brand Memory effects of Retronasal Olfaction' for all the festive details!
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