Finding a Link between the Sense of Smell and Spatial Memory (IMAGE)

McGill University

Finding a Link between the Sense of Smell and Spatial Memory

Caption

Study participants (all young men and women) were asked to spend about 20 minutes exploring a virtual city, travelling down every street and passing key landmarks (schools, a pool and shops). The researchers then asked them to find direct routes between some of the landmarks. To test the correlation between spatial memory and the sense of smell, participants were given another task where they were asked to identify 40 different smells, ranging from basil to strawberry or cinnamon. The people who were best at navigating the virtual city, also proved best at identifying the different odors. The researchers discovered that similar regions of the brain were involved in both tasks.

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McGill University

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