Smell

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Is associating memories with smells an Aspie thing?

I have done this for as long as I can remember, i.e. when I think about any person/place/event I can 'smell' something that I associate with that person/place/event. It was recently pointed out to me that not everyone does this, so just wondering if it's an Aspie thing or just something weird about me.

I have read that the olfactory sense is connected to memory, not specifically an autistic thing.
When I smell cinnamon toast I have a brief visual memory of me running in my parent's back yard as a child. I don't know why that particular memory would stick and others not.

I can't smell anything. I also have trouble remembering things. I used to be great at memorization. I can't remember how my sense of smell was.

My sense of smell is pretty awful now since I'm usually congested. I think maybe my sinuses got damaged because of how often I used to get sick. When I do smell something, though, it can often trigger memories. I don't think it's just an AS thing, though.

I smell 5:00pm. It doesn't have to be 5 when I smell it, but when I was young, I attached a certain smell to a time of day, and now, I'll catch a whiff of 5 o'clock pm.

I don't think it's an aspie thing, I think it's a trait of the memory part of the human brain. My NT family talks about how certain smells take them back.

Papaya lotion takes me back to 2003 when I wore that. The smell of wall paint takes me back to the mid 90's when my parents painted the inside of our house.

I can smell the morning, and smell the rain when it's coming. It's all about how the mind works and it's triggers.

I remember reading something (no idea what) that said smell is one of the strongest triggers for memory's.

A lot of smells trigger old childhood memories. Some of my memories go back to my toddler years I welcome most of my memories.

The smell of car exhaust in the fall or winter reminds me of waiting for the school bus with my brother

The smell of cotton candy reminds me of going to Darian Lake Amusement Park with my parents when I was a kid

The smell of rain reminds me of when I use to watch it rain back when I was so young I could barely look out the window and had to stand partially on my tippy toes to look out.

The smell of charcoal burning in the grill reminds of the 4th of July when I was around 12

The smell of fresh blacktop reminds me of my early teens when I was hanging out with my friends in the summer

The smell of a hot lightbulb reminds me of operating the 16mm film projector when I was in grade school from 4th to 6th grade because most teachers could not figure it out.

I miss the days of my youth when I was not in school I had some great summers.

I don't think it's just autistic, most people associate smells with memories even if they don't realise it -- I think most people have to be smelling the smell to know it brings up a memory, most of the time.
I'm not sure what kind of memories I get from smell, though, because they're not actual memory sequences that I can say "That time when..." If I smell ketchup, it makes me think of metal in a water-pressure cutting machine. Smelling paper makes me think of a dusty, old window and windowsill with sun streaming through the glass panes. So they probably are memories, just close-up snapshots of them, momentary pieces.

The smell of tobacco smoke always immediately reminds me of my grandparent's house.

I think it's a common thing. There's something different about the pathway that the sense of smell takes in the brain. The part that senses odors is actually part of the limbic system (and is directly connected to the hippocampus, which is involved in memory), whereas all of the other senses comes in a different way (through the thalamus).

It makes it interesting to wonder what life as a dog or other 'nose-based' animal would be like. Would there be a strong current of memories and instincts flowing along for each square inch, everywhere? And whether as humans we have an "impoverished" sensory experience of the world.

Smells do more than trigger memories though, they make you feel like you're actually there, even just for a split second.

There is a smell of peaches which for some reason reminds me of my ex.

Did you eat a lot of peaches when you were with her? Or maybe it was a body lotion.

Yea, it's definitely a body lotion but I don't think I ate peaches around her, although I did have a ton of mints.

What triggered it off even more is the fact that I recently tried a face product to get rid of my acne which surprisingly is working, it just smells exactly the same.

It's not just an AS thing, it not just an NT thing - it's a synesthesia thing. I've got this really powerfully because of temporal lobe epilepsy. Well it's been really powerful when I have seizures especially hallucinations.
I could read the word banana and smell those candy bananas I had as a kid.
I taste things like fruit from a memory all the time. Same with cigarettes, vegemite, mustard, various candies, etc.
I also get a taste at the same time as the smell.
I can also get smells and tastes from certain locations. A sort of smell/taste location memory. My sister gets this too because she says my room smells like Nintendo Gamecube. I had the Gamecube connected to my PC TV and we'd play for hours on it.

I am like this with certain smells and tastes, but I don't put that down to me being an aspie. I think people just have their own way of learning or recalling things.