Why smell jumps the queue when it comes to memories

Smells hardwire deep into the brain, writes Henna Cundill, as she explores why they jump-start such vivid memories.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

An autumnal scene of a church yard and church framed by leafless trees.

'The smell of dust and damp stone will always cry “safety!”'

Jakub Pabis on Unsplash.

When I was a 22-year-old undergraduate my mother died quite suddenly. I can't remember the name of the undertakers we used, nor the chaplain who took her funeral. I can no longer visualise what any of their faces looked like. I know I visited the chaplain’s house to plan the funeral, but I can't remember exactly where that house was. What sticks is that the day of the funeral was a sultry summer's day, and both the chaplain and the undertakers smelt of perspiration. To this day there are moments where I catch that same whiff of man-sweat in some other location, and for a fleeting second, I am a bewildered 22-year-old once more.

Here is another memory. I attended a tiny, rural Church of England primary school in the middle of England. At the end of each school year, all of us donned our little Wellington boots, which smelt faintly of slurry (since this was dairy-farming country) and sweaty feet. Then we lined up in a crocodile and trudged through the bluebell-wood (damp leaves) and skirted the edge of fields (silage, which stings the nose) covering the mile or so between our school building and the village church.

We would enter the church grounds through the back field, hurrying through an eerily muffled graveyard with tombstones towering far above our heads and the grass disturbingly lumpy beneath our little feet. To the chidings of “Quickly!” and “Quietly!” we children scurried down a gravel path, away from this unsettling place of death, to reach the cool sanctuary of a little church, and the comforting smells (for me, at least) of damp stone and dusty hymnbooks.

Others may not have the same associations, but for me the smell of dust and damp stone will always cry “safety!” and the reassurance that “there are no ghosts in here!” in contrast to that troubling graveyard. From death to life. Yet, at the same time, getting stuck with my nose close to some man’s whiffy armpit on the Tube will forever insinuate that I am just a child pretending to be a grown-up, out of my depth, overwhelmed with one thousand decisions to make (“What flowers do you want for her coffin?”) and no-one to advise. In the midst of life, death again.

On reflection I will know that my emotions are being manipulated by my nose, in ways which are more or less than helpful depending on the circumstances.

Of course, I am not 22 years old and lost anymore, no matter what that man’s armpit tries to tell me. My rational mind knows better, but my rational mind doesn’t get a say – or doesn’t get the first say anyway. This is because smell is the only one of our senses that bypasses the thalamus (the brain’s ‘filtering gate’ that decides which part of the brain needs to respond to sensory input) and goes straight to the limbic system, where emotional memory is stored.

Sometimes it is very obvious that this is taking place, such as in the examples given above. On reflection I will know that my emotions are being manipulated by my nose, in ways which are more or less than helpful depending on the circumstances. But it can happen in more subtle ways too. Supermarkets infamously pump out smells to influence our buying choices, and we’re trying to sell our house right now, so we’ve been brewing a whole lot more coffee than we ever usually would.

Intriguingly, scientists don’t really know why the human sense of smell jumps the queue when it comes to cognitive processing. There are biological theories, such as that the smell of predator could wake up our ancestors while they were sleeping and/or could allow them to follow a scent trail quickly when fleeing danger or seeking food. There are social theories too, such as that we don’t have a lot of good words to describe smells, so the brain just doesn’t bother trying to analyse them. Whatever the truth of the matter, the reality is that (whether we like it or not) our noses are an emotional trip-hazard.

When I walk through those great oak doors there is a moment, a glitch in the matrix, when the unmistakable smell of church hits my nose. Dust, damp… a little hint of mouse.

I can’t help wondering what this tells me about my religious practice. Do I go to church because I have made a cognitive decision to worship God each Sunday? Or do I go to church because I am following my nose, getting away from a world full of armpits and responsibilities to a place where I am a seven-year-old girl, all gingham dress and wellies, feeling safe. If so, does it matter?

Truth is, my mind can give me a dozen reasons not to go to church every single week. In fact, two dozen reasons. More. It has always been a busy week; I’m always behind on work. The house always needs a sort out and the car is never washed. But because certain congregation members are normally counting on me for certain things, and because I’m still pretending to be a grown up, I typically drag myself out the door, and off to church I go.

And week on week, without fail, when I walk through those great oak doors there is a moment, a glitch in the matrix, when the unmistakable smell of church hits my nose. Dust, damp… a little hint of mouse. My body registers this before my mind; my shoulders drop a little of their tension. Even if it’s just for a fleeting moment, I start to feel that I know for sure what is absolutely real in my life and what is just pretend.

Is this knowledge irrational – since it doesn’t come from the cognitive part of my mind? Or is there a God who knows that the cognitive part of my mind sometimes tells me all sorts of untrue and unhelpful things. Is there a God who is choosing to reach out to me in more subtle, more ancient ways?

I can only wonder if I have been following my nose all this time, without even noticing. Drawn along by an ancient scent trail that leads me time and time again…this way…and that way…until I reach a place where there is safety, and bread.

Article

Books

Culture

Digital

Mental Health

26 May 2025

4 min read

Why we should mourn the death of the semi-colon

In our busy, frenetic lives, we need that small pause more than ever.

Paul Bradbury

Paul is a pioneer minister, writer and researcher based in Poole, Dorset.

A woman stands across a busy roads, looking up from her phone in a sad way.

Su San Lee on Unsplash.

In the morning news; a headline about the decline of a species. Thankfully not a rare rhino or butterfly this time. It’s a punctuation mark. The semi-colon is an increasingly endangered creature. According to recent research it has declined in use by 50 per cent in the past two decades. This on top of a 70 per cent slide in usage between 1800 and 2000. Further research suggests that 67 per cent of students rarely use it and over 50 per cent wouldn’t know how to anyway.

I’m kind of indifferent on the merits or otherwise of the semi-colon. But I at least appreciate the option. So, its value feels worth defending. Who knows what unintended consequences in the ecology of language might occur if we lost it all together?

The semi-colon was invented in the 15th century by a scholar and printer Aldus Pius Manutius the Elder (whose name might have benefited from a semicolon itself). A hybrid between a comma and a colon, the semi-colon invites a pause; it’s a moment to breathe. And it opens enough space to reflect on what might be being said between what went before and what comes after. It signals a kind of meaning in the gap. It creates a hint of resonance beyond the plain meaning of the words of a sentence.

Despite its enthusiastic use by the likes of no less than Jane Austen and Charles Dickens it has certainly come in for some stick over the years. Kurt Vonnegut famously said of semi-colons ‘all they do is show you’ve been to college.’ Who knew two marks on a page could signal such elitism? The semi-colon says, ‘you're trying too hard’. Or it might just say, ‘why did you do that?’, since so many people fail to understand what it represents. Novelist John Irvine reckoned readers ‘think the author has killed a fruit fly directly above a comma’.

So what is killing off the semi-colon? Well, if the statistics above are to be believed it could be as simple as a decreasing understanding on how to use it. Though of course there are feedback loops here. We learn grammar and punctuation as much by reading as by being taught. Others point the finger at the breathless world of social media. As more and more of our communication is constrained by space and time, the semi-colon’s quiet request for a pause for consideration is being largely ignored.

We need semi-colons if our lives are to be more than just an incessant flow of connected moments .

If this is the case then the semi-colon is another species within a kind of mass extinction which is the result of the great acceleration of our age, alongside the coffee break, lunch break, walk round the block and long stare out of the window. These are simply things that we don’t have time for anymore; we wonder if they had any value in the first place. The semi-colon is largely being replaced by the dash. Which is pretty ironic when you think about it.

Perhaps concern over the loss of this little mark is in an awareness that it’s a kind of canary in the gold mine of our culture of acceleration. The loss of the semi-colon is a sign of the loss of something far more significant: the rhythms and cadences of our lives that afford pause, reflection; that open up the kind of spaces where creativity; meaning; imagination; spirituality happen.

The semi-colon reminds me, strangely, of the Hebrew psalms. The monastic tradition includes regular communal singing (or saying) of the psalms. Typically, these poems, which formed such a key part of Hebrew worship, work on the basis of what is known as parallelism. Essentially each thought in a psalm is composed as a sentence in two lines. The two halves of these sentences are parallel, in the sense that they both make statements about the same thing. Sometimes these statements say the same thing differently. Sometimes one half of the sentence builds on another. There are endless creative ways in which the psalmists use this simple device.

When psalms are used in prayer or worship parallelism is often observed by introducing a pause at the end of the first half of the sentence. It's an odd tradition if you are not used to it. An established monastic community naturally feels the length of pause together. Visitors to a service in a monastery often end up coming in early.

Yet, with time you begin to realise these pauses are a wonderful thing. The pauses create a rhythm and time signature that invites reflection. The pause says ‘take your time, there’s a lot of meaning here in all these similes and metaphors, what might they mean to you?’ Perhaps even ‘what, in this moment to breathe, might God be saying to you?’

There’s a feeling for so many of us that life is starting to feel a bit like the final chapter of James Joyces’ Ulysses: devoid of punctuation. We need semi-colons if our lives are to be more than just an incessant flow of connected moments. And we need to learn how to use them. We need practices that make space for the undervalued attributes of reflection, daydreaming, prayer. In that sense saying the psalms may be a practice worth giving time to.

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Join with us