Recent trends in olfactory and autobiographical memory research to older adults −Focusing on identification ability, age-related positivity effects, and function−

Abstract

In today’s hyper-aged society, research on the health and well-being of older adults is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed by society as a whole. After reviewing previous studies regarding memories of past events (i.e., autobiographical memories) evoked by olfactory stimuli, I introduce our three studies dealing with older adults. First, a study focused on olfactory identification ability showed that the vividness of autobiographical memories varied with individual differences in olfactory identification ability in younger people, but not in older people. Second, a study focused on the age-related positivity effect, a phenomenon in which older adults recall more positive memories than younger people, confirmed the occurrence of this phenomenon in odor-cued situations. Third, in another study, a new scale was developed to measure the function of autobiographical memory cued by odor in older adults. Based on the basic findings, we hope that this research will be applied to studies on reminiscence therapy cued by odor in older adults with dementia.