Odour-induced mental time travel into the past and future: Do odour cues retain a unique link to our distant past?

Abstract

Proustian memories, or memories spontaneously evoked by taste and odours, have been argued to be uniquely linked to our remote past. This view suggests an asymmetry between odour-cued memories and odour-cued representations of future events regarding their temporal distance to the present. We investigated the temporal distribution and other phenomenological qualities of autobiographical memories and future events employing a 2 (temporal direction: past vs future)×3 (cue type: verbal, visual, and odour) mixed design. We found that while odour-evoked memories were predominantly from the first decade of life, the future condition showed a marked preponderance of odour-cued events in the upcoming year. Odour-evoked memories were also less specific than the verbal and visual conditions. The odour condition was responsible for interactions concerning coherency of the events and the events’ significance to the life story. The results support the view that odours possess a unique ability to evoke remote autobiographical memories.

Keywords:

• Autobiographical memory
• Mental time travel
• Odours

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank David C. Rubin and Morten Bech Sørensen for their comments, and the Danish Research Council for the Humanities as well as the Danish National Research Foundation for funding.