I have had a peculiar sensation all my life. I often will smell a certain smell and it will take me back to a place I was in recently; or not so recently. For example, we used to have these fantastic Pesach trips in Scottsdale, AZ. The hotel had a particular scent. Now, whenever I smell anything similar to that scent, I'm brought back to those magical days in Arizona.
This is such a weird sensation; what is the reasoning behind it? Well, it has to do with the process of smelling. Smell is the only sense in your body that bypasses the thalamus (the Fedex shipping system of your brain). When you smell something, that smell binds to receptors, which go to the olfactory bulb, which are then relayed to higher regions of the brain via converged axons.
The key element of this process that relates to me and my smell=memory phenomenon is the olfactory bulb. The olfactory bulb is where the transduction of the smell to a neural impulse takes place. But the olfactory bulb is also related to the limbic system. The limbic system accounts mainly for memory, emotion, and experiences.
So this is the explanation to my phenomenon. When I smell a scent I've smelled before, it goes through my limbic system and brings me back to that experience. Pretty cool.
Why is the nose the only thing to bypass the thalamus? That has always been on my mind. To add to your post, I think the same could be said with the sight of Scottsdale, Arizona. After transduction and retinal processing, you go through parallel processing and eventually hit the stage of recognition. Once you recognize the area, you also feel at peace.
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