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Smell-Based Memory Training: Evidence of Olfactory Learning and Transfer to the Visual Domain
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, Perception and psychophysics. Swedish Collegium of Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0856-0569
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, Perception and psychophysics.
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, Personality, Social and Developmental Psychology.
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, Perception and psychophysics.
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Number of Authors: 82020 (English)In: Chemical Senses, ISSN 0379-864X, E-ISSN 1464-3553, Vol. 45, no 7, p. 593-600Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Human and non-human animal research converge to suggest that the sense of smell, olfaction, has a high level of plasticity and is intimately associated with visual-spatial orientation and memory encoding networks. We investigated whether olfactory memory (OM) training would lead to transfer to an untrained visual memory (VM) task, as well as untrained olfactory tasks. We devised a memory intervention to compare transfer effects generated by olfactory and non-olfactory (visual) memory training. Adult participants were randomly assigned to daily memory training for about 40 days with either olfactory or visual tasks that had a similar difficulty level. Results showed that while visual training did not produce transfer to the OM task, olfactory training produced transfer to the untrained VM task. Olfactory training also improved participants’ performance on odor discrimination and naming tasks, such that they reached the same performance level as a high-performing group of wine professionals. Our results indicate that the olfactory system is highly responsive to training, and we speculate that the sense of smell may facilitate transfer of learning to other sensory domains. Further research is however needed in order to replicate and extend our findings.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. Vol. 45, no 7, p. 593-600
Keywords [en]
memory, odorants, smell, olfactory disorders, spatial learning
National Category
Psychology
Research subject
Psychology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-188779DOI: 10.1093/chemse/bjaa049ISI: 000591530900012OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-188779DiVA, id: diva2:1516806
Note

This study was supported by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences [grant number M14-0375:1] to M.L.; Swedish Research Council [grant number 421-2012-806]; Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation [grant number 2014:0178]; Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation [grant number 2016:0229] to J.K.O.

Available from: 2021-01-12 Created: 2021-01-12 Last updated: 2022-02-25Bibliographically approved

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Olofsson, Jonas K.Ekström, IngridLindström, JoannaSyrjänen, ElmeriLarsson, Maria

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