Kissing roses can improve your memory

Roses not only be used to express love and affection but also improve your memory. The scent of roses is proved to increase memory activity in the brain.

As reported by the Science journal, researchers from Germany conducted experiments to prove whether certain fragrances can stimulate the memory of the brain even when a person is in a state of sleep.

Researcher Jan Born from University of Lubeck and his colleagues asked 74 volunteers to play & arrange cards in computer until complete. In this game, they are required to memorize the location of each object. While playing, some people breathe the scent of roses.

Each of them is then asked to close their eyes and to sleep with their head are place inside the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) tube. This magnetic imaging tool is used to observe everyone's brain activity during sleep. Throughout the sleep, Born also gives the scent of roses to some people.

The next day, they are tested again with the same game. Apparently, people who sleep while smelling the roses can remember the position of the card pair with an average accuracy of up to 97.2 percent. As for those who does not smell the aroma of roses during their sleep can only remember with 86 percent accuracy.

The MRI scanner also shows that the hippocampus, part of the brain that plays a role in the learning process, is active when a sleeping person smells a rose.

This suggests that the scent of roses may stimulate the memory work of the brain when a person sleeps. The same thing has been proven in previous studies of rat and birds. While asleep, mice honed their ability to find a way out of the labyrinth, and birds can hone the new chirping skills introduced to him.

Nevertheless, how human learn during sleep has not been ascertained whether it is the same as animals or not.

It still needs to be investigated further because researchers found that the quality of sleep also plays a role. Rose scent only improves the memory quality if a person is sleeping comfortably (slow-wave sleep) but it has no effect at all in people who sleep suddenly (Rapid Eye Movement or REM sleep).

Therefore if you want your lover to always remember you, don't forget to bring her roses and ask her to save the roses near her bed while she is sleeping.