研究表明，气味会改变大脑对记忆的处理方式

研究表明，气味会改变大脑对记忆的处理方式

Have you ever gotten a whiff of a certain smell that brought you back to childhood? Or maybe a scent that reminded you of a past love affair?

你有没有闻到一股让你回到童年的味道?或者是让你想起过去的恋情的味道?

A paper published in Learning and Memory reveals the power scents have to trigger memories of past experiences, as well as the possibility for odor to be used in treating memory-related disorders.

一篇发表在《学习与记忆》杂志上的论文，揭示了气味能够触发对过去经历的记忆，以及气味被用于治疗与记忆相关的疾病的可能性。

“If odor could be used to elicit the rich recollection of a memory — even of a traumatic experience — we could take advantage of that [therapeutically],” said Boston University neuroscientist Steve Ramirez, assistant professor of psychology and brain sciences and senior author of the study, in a statement.

波士顿大学神经学家、心理学和脑科学助理教授、该研究的资深作者斯蒂夫·拉米雷斯在一份声明中说：“如果气味可以用来唤起人们对记忆的丰富回忆，甚至是对创伤经历的回忆，我们可以(从治疗学角度)利用这一点。”。

The traditional belief about how we retain memories goes like this: Systems consolidation theory suggests that our memories start out being processed by a small part of the brain called the hippocampus, which gives them rich details. Over time, the set of brain cells that holds onto a particular memory reactivates and reorganizes. The memory is later processed by the prefrontal cortex and details sometimes get lost.

关于我们如何保留记忆的传统观点是这样的：系统整合理论认为，我们的记忆最初是由一个叫做海马体的大脑小部分处理的，海马体给了我们丰富的细节。随着时间的推移，固定在特定记忆上的一组脑细胞会重新激活和重组。记忆随后被前额叶皮层处理，有时细节会丢失。

In order to answer the question about why scents, which are processed in the hippocampus, can trigger seemingly dormant memories, the academic researchers at Boston University’s Center for Systems Neuroscience created fear memories in mice by giving them a series of harmless but startling electric shocks inside a container.

波士顿大学系统神经科学中心的学术研究人员，为了找到为什么在海马体中处理的气味会触发看似休眠的记忆的问题，在一个容器中给老鼠一系列无害但令人吃惊的电击，从而在老鼠身上产生了恐惧记忆。

Half of the mice were exposed to the scent of almond extract during the shocks, while the other half were not exposed to any scent.

一半的老鼠在电击期间暴露在杏仁提取物的气味中，而另一半没有暴露在任何气味中。

Twenty days later, researchers found that in the no-odor group, processing of the fear memory moved to the prefrontal cortex. However, the odor group still had significant brain activity in the hippocampus.

20天后，研究人员发现在无气味组中，恐惧记忆的处理转移到前额叶皮层。然而，气味组在海马区仍然有显著的大脑活动。

“[This finding suggests] that we can bias the hippocampus to come back online at a timepoint when we wouldn’t expect it to be online anymore because the memory is too old,” Ramirez says. “Odor can act as a cue to reinvigorate or reenergize that memory with detail.”

拉米雷斯说:“(这一发现表明)当我们的记忆老到不足以再被记起时，我们可以让海马体在某个时间点恢复正常。”“气味可以作为一种线索，通过细节来激活或恢复记忆。”