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The human brain is often cited as one of the last great frontiers of scientific discovery, and never does this resonate more with me than right after I wake up from a particularly intense, and peculiar, dream. We spend almost half our lives asleep, but it seems like most of what happens in our heads during that time is a mystery; you can’t record dreams, just as you can’t photograph thoughts, and memory for such things — mine especially, even just after waking — is such a fickle thing.
We discussed here a few months ago the great importance that the olfactory sense has to emotion, and certain kinds of memory:
Smell is the sense most closely associated with emotional memory — just think about how evocative certain scents can be — and the one most closely tied to mental health and happiness. Positive and negative associations with certain smells are locked into our brains from an early age and stick with us the rest of our lives, and to lose that sense of smell is to, in effect, lose a part of our memory. It’s the subtlest of the senses, but perhaps the most crucial in terms of our emotional connection to the world.
This seems like such a basic, caveman kind of question to be asking about the nature of ourselves — but then, that’s exactly why the brain still looms as an important frontier — and it’s this: if smells are so important to our emotional connection to the world, and dreams can be so very emotional, why aren’t smells more prominent in dreams?
Think about it — when the last time you remember having smelled something in a dream? (For me, the answer is … never.) There are some accounts of “olfactory dreams,” like this one from Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams:
Eau de Cologne was held to his nostrils. He found himself in Cairo, in the shop of Johann Maria Farina. This was followed by fantastic adventures which he was not able to recall.
… or this one from a study conducted at Wellesley College in 1901:
I dreamed of looking off toward Milton and saying that beyond lay the ocean. I immediately got the keenest and most natural smell of wind from the flats and the delicious ocean odor. This gave me such intense pleasure, as it always does, that I awoke.
But strangely enough, sleep researchers contend that the other senses have a much greater impact on dreams — the sound of a buzzer could easily induce a sleeper to dream of a buzzer — and olfactory dreams are rare. (It makes me think of watching movies — the closest thing to dreaming while awake — and how dependent they are on the aural and visual, and how strange it would be if “smell-o-vision” were the norm.)
But our faithful readers always seem to have such interesting and diverse experiences when it comes to dreams, I’ll bet there are some of you out there who’ve had smell dreams. Or who’ve had dreams influenced by smells that wafted over them while sleeping. If so, do tell!
Other dreamy posts:
How Do Your Memories Smell?
Waking Up Strange
Should You Wake a Sleepwalker?
Comments (21)
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You should look up lucid dreaming. Its basically the dreamer becoming aware that they are dreaming while still in the dream. When this happens, you can then control the dream (go flying, breathe underwater, etc), as well as have a higher clarity in the dream. You can then try smelling, and anything else at that. Anyway, great article, I’m fascinated by dreams :D
posted by Josiah on 5-12-2008 at 8:22 am
I don’t have lucid dreams but I do have hypersensory ones wherein I can smell, taste, read, see, feel, whatever, all in great clarity. To be perfectly honest I find that when I dream like that I wake up exhausted and sometimes incredibly unsettled, it can be an outright frustration!
posted by pharmacopaeia on 5-12-2008 at 8:39 am
One of my most vivid and horrifying nightmares had components of scent and taste in it. In it I came across some sort of traffic accident involving a truckload of pigs. The scene was drenched in blood and excrement and the animals were crying out in agony. The smell was strongly metallic and with each breath I received a taste sensation with each breath. This was over 20 years ago and I attributed the dream to the fact that I had been listening to the Doors.I immediately connected it to their song “Horse Latitudes” (about a Spanish ship having to jettison horses in mid-ocean in order to lighten the ships load) and the the part in “American Prayer” in which Morrison spoke of coming across a truckload of Indians who had been in an accident.
posted by hd on 5-12-2008 at 8:57 am
I often recall smells in my dreams and they’ve been both pleasant and foul, or perhaps just strange. I’ve even had a dream that was ONLY smells… nothing visual at all, just blackness and cycles of different aromas, from apple pie to newspaper to asphalt. My dreams are pretty bizarre in general, though, and I’ve had success with lucid dreaming in the past. I also have what I call “epic” dreams where I wake up recalling every last detail and I have to write it all down. I just had one of those last week, and it took up for pages of notebook paper to get it all down. My dreams are often bloody, violent and disturbing, and I’ve died in my dreams many times. Usually I’m killed, but I’ve killed myself and have also died due to an accident. Other times my dreams are just extremely weird. I’ve always wanted to participate in a dream study, so if anyone’s looking for volunteers, I’m your woman!
posted by Jill on 5-12-2008 at 9:12 am
I have incredibly realistic dreams – I see color, hear, taste, smell and feel everything.
posted by Leah on 5-12-2008 at 9:16 am
What a coincidence! I just had a dream the night before last where I remember smelling things for the first time. It involved me and a group of people washing off after some sort of vigorous outdoor activity in these deep “puddles” next to a mountain river. After realizing we weren’t getting clean due to the mud, we moved to the river and I remember the breeze picked up. It smelled so real. I live in Colorado and it could’ve been pulled from any hike I’ve ever gone on. It was amazingly vivid. The water and the pebbles at the bottom were very realistic, too. I love dreams like that.
posted by kakatin on 5-12-2008 at 10:36 am
I don’t have a lot of success remembering dreams, so I’m not sure about the scent thing, but I do definitely remember tasting things in dreams. I dreamt about eating some really terrible ice cream and I couldn’t get that sensation out of my mind for a long time. I was half-afraid to eat ice cream after that dream because I thought it would taste like the dream–grainy and sour and really horrid.
posted by Fruppi on 5-12-2008 at 11:12 am
I remember having a dream of my grandmother’s house who had been dead for years. Before that dream I couldn’t remember the layout or items for that matter but during that dream I could see things that had been in that room and the smell of the house. That is the only dream where I have been able to smell anything.
posted by Kristen on 5-12-2008 at 11:19 am
I had a dream where someone else was smoking a cigarette (a nasty smell). What was scary was waking up and wondering if the house was on fire…
The only thing I haven’t been able to do is taste something in a dream.
posted by jim on 5-12-2008 at 11:27 am
I rarely remember my dreams, but in the ones I have remembered, I have never smelled or tasted anything, and I rarely feel anything. Not tasting may have to do with not eating anything in dreams, and I can barely smell when I’m awake, but the rarely feeling anything is kind of odd.
posted by S on 5-12-2008 at 12:43 pm
I love lucid dreaming! Of course, I’ve only ever tried putting myself in different books–haha. I haven’t tried it in a while, but I should try smelling.
I actually dreamt I was making brownies once (really random) and I could smell them. Of course, I didn’t realize how vividly I was smelling them until I awoke and couldn’t sense that anymore.
posted by Allison on 5-12-2008 at 12:58 pm
As I get older, I find that my dreams are more and more like the old-tine novie serials (Flash Gordon, Lash LaRue, Hopalong Cassidy, et al).
I will wake from a particularly vivid dream, think, Oh, that was interesting! And go back to sleep, only to take up the dream exactly where it left off. This phenomenon, in extreme cases, can go on for weeks. Sometimes I’ll have one of these dreams and it will take up again weeks or months later. In the dreams (see lucid dreams, above) I know I’m dreaming, but my primate curiosity demands that I continue.
And yes, I dream in color, have experienced smells (the most intense being a cattle feed lot, and as some of you know, that is REALLY intense) tactile, audio, and taste.
I had a CAT scan about 10 years ago and the images show that my corpus calossi (sp?) is about 5 times the diameter of the average brain. The upshot is that I don’t really have left and right brains, but the two hemispheres connected by the cranial equivalent of a T1 data link. Think that might be why I could be an engineer, a writer, and a musician all at once? :)
posted by Doc on 5-12-2008 at 1:35 pm
I’ve never smelled anything in a dream before, but this post reminded me of another dream I had recently. I dreamed that I reached into the freezer and pulled out a package of steak, and I remember very clearly feeling how COLD it was. It stuck with me the whole next day, and it made me realize how rarely I touch things in dreams. I do hold things and whatnot, but I’m not usually so aware of how they feel. I also can’t think of a time I tasted anything in a dream off the top of my head, but like S said earlier, that’s probably because I don’t usually eat in dreams. (Even the steak I dreamed about…I don’t know what happened to it.) I’ve always thought I dream pretty vividly – I always dream in color, and I hear all sorts of things – but now I realize that I’ve been ignoring about 3/5 of my senses. I wonder if I actually don’t dream the sensations, or if I do but don’t remember them? It’ll be interesting to see if those senses that I haven’t been using crop up in my dreams more often now that I’m more actively aware of them.
posted by Sarah on 5-12-2008 at 1:38 pm
This reminds me of a (Spanish language) short story I read last semester in my Spanish class. It was called “La Noche Boca Arriba,” and it was written by Julio Cortazar. In the story, a man is in the hospital following a motorcycle accident, but he keeps on having vivid and scary dreams of living in the ancient past, all of which include strong smells. In the end, it turns out that the ancient past is his real life, but the hospital part is a dream. I found it kind of creepy. I wonder if there are more stories or novels that use this in their plot.
posted by Sandy on 5-12-2008 at 4:14 pm
I’ve only had one dream where I can recall experiencing a vivid scent.
I’ve kept a dream journal off and on for about six years now. I’ve found my dreams to be fairly consistent with one another in a few areas. Most are monochromatic with either blue or tan hues, most occur without sound, and it’s very rare that I have a nightmare or even a dream with a really stressful situation.
So naturally the one dream where I could smell was completley opposite of my “normal” dreams. Complete with vivid colors, deafning sounds, and it completley scared the crap out of me (still does).
It started in the mountains of Colorado where a bunch of friends and I lit a bonfire in a cave. It’s here where I can remember smelling the distinct scent of burning wood for the first time in the dream. The fire gets out of hand and starts burning the forest. Then it gets odd, while in the cave the ground starts shaking and the mountain is coming down around us, caused from the forest fire we just started.
Next thing I know, I’m overlooking the Ciy of Boulder from highway 36 watching this terrifying brillant red sky caused by the forest fire engulfing the mountains behind it. Without warning I hear a deafning roar and watched in horror as the entire eastern face of Longs Peak erupted into a mushroom cloud of lava, ash, and rock. All of which came hurling down onto Boulder and us.
Suddenly it’s quiet, I’m sitting in our cabin, and can see a crowd of people on the porch looking at something. My parents were throwing a party with their friends to watch the lava flow by the cabin because they were told it was safe. (This without question is something my parents would do in real life if they could). It was then I could smell wood burning and much more distincly than before. I quickly knew why, the lava had shifted and our whole place was ablaze. While I tried to drive me sister and I away while our car melted into the lava.
I was in Germany at the time, visiting family and friends. The dream was so real, so vivid, and so utterly terrifying, that I had to get up and check the internet to make sure it hadn’t happened.
posted by Barrett on 5-12-2008 at 5:20 pm
I used to experience a form of lucid dreaming. I would be dreaming (could be any variety of situations), but I was aware that I was dreaming. When I didn’t like the way something was going in my dream, I would rewind it – LITERALLY. It was like rewinding an old VCR tape, complete with static lines with all of the images going in reverse. Usually I only rewound the dream a little bit and then when it replayed, something would change and the dream could move on. On some occasions the dream would replay exactly the same and I’d have to rewind the dream again. Some times I had to do this multiple times to change the dream, but I was aware of being irritated about having to rewind.
There was nothing special about these dreams, and while I remembered them at the time, I don’t really remember them now (in detail). I don’t remember ever smelling anything though.
I was never able to make myself be in this state, but I was always aware when it happened. I could control the dream once there, but couldn’t get there on my own.
Interestingly, this hasn’t happened in a long time. Actually, it stopped about the time DVDs took over. Since the dreams always rewound like a VCR tape, I wonder if it is connected.
posted by Karen on 5-12-2008 at 8:30 pm
I tend to have really detailed and sensory-oriented dreams most of the time, but there’s one that sticks out the most with me, that I had about 12 years ago, when I was in college.
It started out out on a covered deck of a ship, and I was running my hand along the polished wooden railing, and holding it out, looking at it against the setting sun reflecting off the water, smelling the sea smell. It was… not my hand. It was sticking out of a dark suit sleeve, and it was clearly a man’s hand.
I skipped to being in a cabin on the same ship – with dark wood paneling and that that rich oiled smell of polish. I looked in a mirror and saw the dream-me face (a guy with a Mediterranean complexion), and then someone popped in and said we had to go.
I skipped again to being on the deck of the ship, and it was loud with hissing and people yelling and that coal smoke smell – like the one you’d smell when a steam-engine train is in the vicinity. (Anyone who’s gone to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio knows what I’m talking about). It was dark and the ship was sinking by the bow. I was on the port side, somewhere between the middle and the end. There was a gap in the railing where a lifeboat had clearly been, and I figured my only chance was to jump.
So, I jumped, and felt that awful stomach-dropping feeling, and then hit a cold wall of water. I remember swimming for awhile, and seeing an old man bobbing nearby, looking resigned. I could see the lights on the ship, but it was dark by me, with lots of splashing and yelling and cold. I remembered feeling angry that I wouldn’t get to make it to my birthday party at a pub that my friends were planning when I got to Buffalo.
So, I went to sleep (in the dream), and woke up (in real life), feeling incredibly freaked out and disoriented (and cold).
What’s weird is that from time to time, when I’m walking over this one bridge where the road/sidewalk cross over a train track, when there’s a train going by carrying open top cars full of coal, that coal smell brings back memories of this really really freakish dream, and I get all cold, again.
posted by Mel on 5-12-2008 at 8:46 pm
I don’t smell things so vividly in dreams that I wake up surprised not to smell them anymore, but I do notice various scents in dreams as in real life. Last night, for example, there was a part of my dream where I was complaining about people smoking at the entrance of a restaurant, and I remember smelling the smoke. But did I actually smell it, or was the smell just “understood,” as many things in dreams are? That I don’t know.
posted by Celeste M. on 5-13-2008 at 1:01 am
I found this post because I was looking for information about smells in dreams. I had my first dream last night where I remember smelling something in the dream. I was sitting at a table with a group of people, and the man sitting next to me leaned over and placed his head on my shoulder. I turned my face into his hair and I was able to smell his shampoo and cologne. I also remember the feel and textures in the dream which is another thing that I am not used to. With the touch, I only remember one other dream where I could feel as strongly as in this dream, and that was one where I was diving off of a waterfall, and I felt the water as I entered it.
posted by Heather on 5-21-2008 at 9:13 am
There are times when I remember smelling, tasting or feeling in my dreams. I remember one dream, I picked up a scent of lavender from this pot of stew to feed to the dead (very long, weird and interesting dream). A tasting dream would be when I was eating a piece of apple pie. I’m sure this was a memory that I replaced in my dreams but I was chewing deliciously cinnamon apple pie, crispy too. I can’t recall anything at the moment but I also sometimes feeling something in my dream, I think there was one involving some pain.
My dreams are like movie reels that I just float along with. I don’t know but I think I am just over sensitive to being there. I’m imaginative so maybe that means that I am to a point that my imagination from my dream is my reality. I don’t know but I love dreaming.
posted by Sammie S. on 6-4-2008 at 3:16 am
I smell and hear things all the time in my dreams. But unlike other people, I never dream of having to use the toilet. When I do need to wake up to go to the bathroom, I just automatically wake up and go to the bathroom. In the middle of a dream I will partially wake up and be like, better get up and go to the bathroom, use the bathroom, and then go back to bed, and usually I am able to get back to the same dream. I have even fallen asleep on the toilet for a few seconds.
When I dreamed of my birthtown and being with family down there, I could smell cigarette smoke, the smell of the air as it is not as clean as where I currently live, and the smell of bus exhaust. All in the same dream. But maybe I am weird compared to some people.
posted by Aprildawn on 1-3-2009 at 3:57 am