Tasting Memories

By Anonymous -

We've discussed (and experienced) the interesting ways in which smell is closely tied to memory. The experience of a scent is instantaneous; without conscious thought, we are taken back in time to when we smelled the specific aroma either for the first time or in a particularly important or memorable time. It is no question that each of us could come up with an example of this without giving it much thought.

In talking about taste, we have also uncovered that most of our sense of taste is actually smell. Dr. Rachel Herz showed us this in action when she had us plug our nose and eat jellybeans. When we were unable to smell, we were unable to taste individual flavors; our experience of the jellybean was reduced to a sense of sweetness.

So, then, wouldn't it mean that taste and memory are also closely related? Take for example the Disney movie Ratatouille in which the icy exterior of the harsh food critic is melted when he takes a bite of the title food and is instantly transported back to his childhood kitchen and his mother's love.


Disney movies are indeed marketed for children, but we can't deny that the makers of these films put a lot of research into the stories and concepts they include. So in the case of Ratatouille's food critic, was his nostalgic experience related only to smell alone? We think of food critics as having fine palates; do they really only have fine-tuned senses of smell? 

Apparently there is a link in the brain that connects "the areas of the brain responsible for taste memory in a negative context and those areas in the brain responsible for processing the memory of the time and location of the sensory experience" (source). However, this is mainly related to negative experiences; the link is stronger in those cases (which goes along with why and how we remember 'extreme' experiences as opposed to the more mundane). Regardless, I think it's interesting to take a closer look at. Do anosmic people have any sort of taste memory, or any memories regarding food (even if they can't taste the intricate flavor combinations)? Is this still a case of remembering only the extremes? Like most children, my elementary school years were filled with a lot of macaroni and cheese; tasting this does not bring me back to a specific memory, but it makes me feel happy. Is that a taste and memory connection at play, or just an experience of enjoying a certain food?

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