Scented Sleep Boosts Memory in the Morning

Add a little scent to your evening and your sleep, and your memory works better in the morning. A recent study showed that the smell of roses, administered while participants played a computer game, and then while they slept, improved their rate of recall after they woke by 13 percent.

The scent, thought to act as a stimulus to the part of the brain consolidating memories from the night before, worked only when applied during deep-sleep cycles, and not dream-filled REM sleep. The findings demonstrate that some regions of the brain and phases of sleep may be uniquely specialized to help process learned information—and that external clues can enhance the process. (More medicine stories.)