"But if the individual aspects of the evening, such as the music playing in the restaurant, the candles on the table and the taste of the steak were stored in different sensory parts of brain, then the whole memory could come back to you through just one of your senses being re-awakened."
"In an extreme case such as a survival situation, by creating memory associations you would learn to anticipate the pounce of a predator from a number of sensory cues a pattern of footprints in the sand, a rustling of a bush, or a musky scent in the wind even if you couldn't see it."
"Advertising relies on the fact that memories are a set of associations rather than unitary chunks, where a picture of woman drinking a cocktail on a beach can stir up your own holiday memories, even if the only similarity between the image and your memory is the sun hat she is wearing."
"That sun hat can set off your own memories of feeling the sand between your toes, hearing the crash of waves, and smelling the pungent aroma of seaweed."
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Contact: Jenny Gimpel
j.gimpel@ucl.ac.uk
44-207-679-9739
University College London
26-May-2004