What sense brings you the closest to “total memory recall”?

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   rainsanmartinposted 9 years ago

   What sense brings you the closest to “total memory recall”?
   
   Sent?  Like an old perfume. Photographs? Sounds? Such as audio recordings.  Touch? Taste? There is a stark difference between remembering a past event and feeling as though you have traveled back in time! Have you remembered something so vividly that you felt the atmosphere in the room change?
   
   

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2. 70

   connorjposted 9 years ago

   
   
   What an excellent question. This requires deep contemplation, after all a picture indeed is worth more than a 1000 words. The only direct root to our brain is through olfactory (Smell). Yet when a memory gets implanted significantly in our memory, deep enough to cause post-traumatic stress disorder it was indeed a multi-sensory experience or complete emersion. Thus I would say it is the inter-play or multisensory experience that would indeed trigger complete memory recall. Although if I could only choose a singular sense I would conclude olfactory sense it is indeed the only direct link to our brain and vision can indeed be fooled sense our brain recreates the visual mostly in our occipital lobe and can indeed be fooled (optical illusions)...

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      rainsanmartinposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      It's agreed that the sense of smell takes one to a time travel experience more than any other. The direct brain connection explains this.  Now try to recall the smell of the past and it's atmosphere without the aid of scent!

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3. 66

   Tusitala Tomposted 9 years ago

   My experience of being "immediately taken back emotionally," was to come into a building a smell the exact same smell I'd experienced in a somewhat fearful moment some twenty-four years earlier.   The moment I came into a certain building and that particular linoleum polish "hit my nostrils" I was filled with dread.   
   
   As it was, the earlier incident wasn't really traumatic.  It was my anticipation that it would be that stayed.   So it seems that it is not an actual event but how we feel about that event - even thinking about it before hand - which stays.
   
   But to me, there is no doubt about it.  The sense of smell is the most basic when it comes to 'Total Memory Recall.'

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      rainsanmartinposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      It really is amazing how the sense of smell has the potential to not only help us to recall the event, but to bring back all of the emotions that we had at the time of its occurrence.

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   rainsanmartinposted 9 years ago

   For those reading this question I want to make it known I would never advocate "hypnosis" as a method for memory recall. Fake memories can be implanted into the patient and may also open up a gateway to demonic influence. Altered consciousness via drugs or trans meditative states should be avoided. We can however rebuild neural pathways by activity recalling past events, taking advantage of the senses to further this recall.

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