Smell and Mem­o­ry Consolidation

Smell and Mem­o­ry Consolidation

Improv­ing our learn­ing abil­i­ties is impor­tant for numer­ous aspects of our life. Sev­er­al stud­ies found ben­e­fi­cial effects of pre­sent­ing cues (odor or sounds) dur­ing learn­ing and dur­ing sleep for mem­o­ry per­for­mance. A recent study apply­ing a real-life par­a­digm indi­cat­ed that addi­tion­al odor cue­ing dur­ing a Final Test can fur­ther increase this cue­ing effect. The present online study builds on these find­ings with the fol­low­ing ques­tions: (1) Can we repli­cate ben­e­fi­cial mem­o­ry effects of addi­tion­al odor cue­ing dur­ing tests? (2) How many odor cue­ing learn­ing ses­sions and odor cue­ing nights of sleep max­i­mize the learn­ing suc­cess? (3) Can odor cue­ing also reduce the amount of for­get­ting over time?