In grade school, my favorite place on campus was the library. Ours was an old school, and the library was small with dark wood floors, tables, chairs, and shelves. To this day, the lemony scent of certain wood-care products makes me feel a wonderful sense of nostalgia as I’m taken back to that old library and the adventures I found in the books it housed.

We all know smells can remind us of people, places, and events from our pasts. But recently Israeli researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science began studying how the link between odor and memory might be used to help treat trauma patients.

During a series of experiments, the researchers found that people are more likely to remember unpleasant associations—for instance, an activity accompanied by the the vile odor of dead fish. By conducting magnetic resonance imaging scans of subjects’ brains during the experiments, the researchers detected that part of the hippocampus and amygdala light up when smells are first associated with a new object. Similar experiments using sounds instead of smells did not product the same promising scan results.

So what do these tests mean for the rest of us? Eventually, the researchers say, they may be able to use smell-related therapies to improve memory—and even to erase or dull the memories of childhood traumas.