The way you breathe can impact your memory, as per a new study published in JNeurosci.
The researchers compared the effects of nose breathing and mouse breathing to arrive at the conclusion that breathing through your nose can aid odor recognition and thus help with memory.
Previous experiments on animals have shown the link between sniffing and memories. Based on these, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found around two dozen young men and women and made them inhale 12 different scents from vials. They were then told to remember the smell and repeat the process. The effects of nose and mouse breathing were compared during a one-hour consolidation period.
The study revealed that nose breathers, who had their mouths taped during the consolidation period, experienced greater odor recognition than those who had their noses clipped.
According to Artin Arshamian, lead author of the study and neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute,
Given the fact that breathing has been used to change mental states for thousands of years, we still know next to nothing about respiration and brain function in humans.Artin Arshamian
The study explains that memories pass through three main stages: encoding, consolidation and retrieval.
While earlier works have shown that nasal respiration entrails neural oscillations that aid the first and the last of these processes, this study also shows the role it plays during consolidation by enhancing recognition memory.
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