According to recent research, your nose can help you to get better school reports.
How is that possible?
What we learn during the day will be built into our long-term memory during sleep at night. (This is one of the reasons why sleep is important for every student who wants to get good grades!)
A German research team has found that this knowledge-storing process can be more effective if we use an odor.
It has long been established that our sense of smell is intricately linked to our memory. Research indicates that odors serve as stronger triggers than any other sensory cue when it comes to recalling personally meaningful memories.
“Evolutionarily speaking, any animal’s sense of smell is a critical survival tool,” notes Christina Zelano, PhD. “We are constantly monitoring the air around us with every breath, sending information directly to our nervous system.”
Earlier studies conducted in a laboratory setting with students have already demonstrated that odors enhance the efficiency of learning. When students memorized information in the presence of a certain odor and later encountered the same scent during deep sleep, they remembered more things the next day.
The recent study conducted in Germany went further by doing the experiment in classroom setting. In this study the students were exposed to rose scent while memorizing English words at school. During the whole night, the same rose scent spread throughout their rooms at home.
Students undergoing this scored about 30% better the next day on the test than those who learned and slept under normal conditions, without smells.
A third group was dosed with the same rose scent during the test as well, and these students performed even better: they remembered more words than the second group with rose scent during studying and the night after. However, scientists need to verify this impact further as in this case, the difference in this group was not significant enough.
According to the researchers, scents ‘turn on’ the process of lifting memories from short-term to long-term memory. This effect worked with all kinds of odors–even unpleasant smells!
What odor will you keep next to you while studying and sleeping? Don’t’ forget that it is important to use the same odor during learning and sleeping! Or even during the exam too!
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Sources:
Human hippocampal connectivity is stronger in olfaction than other sensory systems – ScienceDirect
