It looks like nothing more than a bedside fan. To program it, you hit the “on” button once.
But what happens next could improve your memory by 226%.
This is Memory Air, a new product born from decades of science charting the relationship between our nose and our brain. Each night, Memory Air cycles through 40 different, undisclosed scents, twice. As you sleep—even though you don’t consciously smell these scents—research suggests that it can measurably improve your memory within weeks.
How is that possible?
As the company’s founder—UC Davis professor emeritus Michael Leon—explains, “We are functionally odor deprived.” Whereas humans evolved in a scent-filled world, where we didn’t even shower, he suggests that whatever room you’re residing in now probably smells like nothing by design.
That’s difficult, as our cognition and ability to smell are closely linked. “All memory loss precedes or is accompanied closely by olfactory loss,” notes Leon, who points out many of us experienced brain fog and loss of scent during COVID-19. “In most neurological diseases it’s the first symptom.”
We don’t need to completely untangle the relationship between smell and memory to understand that they affect one another. Smell is a learnable behavior—and often a re-learnable behavior. And relearning that behavior can actually improve our memory.
Leon believes that smell has such a powerful effect on memory because “the olfactory system has an anatomical advantage.” It is the only sense that has a straight pathway to your hippocampal cluster, which manages memory and emotion. (Meanwhile, all other senses take a detour through your thalamus first.)
By feeding this region of your brain new odors, research has found you can actually increase gray matter and neuroplasticity—generating new connections in your brain. Smells appear to be a way to exercise and strengthen the very area of your brain that handles memory.
In 2023, Leon published a study demonstrating that by routinely exposing people to smells, you could improve some of their mental faculties. A randomly assorted collection of people ages 60 to 85 were exposed to one of seven smells each night for two hours over six months. After that time, his team observed that the smelling group tested with a 226% improvement in memory over a control group—and fMRI scans exhibited positive shifts in brain structures supporting memory.
But Leon is quick to point out that his findings are not special; rather, they are increasingly the norm. “There are now about 20 studies that have used olfactory enrichment to improve memory,” he says, noting that the methodologies vary wildly. “I think the strength of literature as a whole is what we should look at. This is such a strong phenomenon. Who does it, and how they do it, is not as important as getting more odor to the brain.”
Turning research into product
To develop this science into a functional product, Leon’s team raised an undisclosed sum from a group of wealthy investors. They also tapped Christian Garnett, from Garnett Design Group, to spend three years transforming theory into intervention.
For the final product, Leon wanted to mirror similar research out of South Korea, which subjected participants to a full 40 smells twice a day (and found similar gains around memory, while noting that it reduced depression and increased facilities with attention and language, too).
But how do you fit 40 smells in a box?
“It was probably the biggest challenge, to figure out how to turn on and off scents at will,” Garnett says.
Memory Air needed to run through dozens of scents, twice, making each distinctive with no lingering odor that would blend them from one to another. That meant each had four minutes to appear and dissipate.
“Most of the scent industry is optimized to do the opposite: get the most scent out and have it last as long as possible,” Garnett says with a laugh.
Garnett’s team tested all sorts of ideas. It tried developing a white odor technology—think white noise but for smells—with so many frequencies that everything cancels out into nothing, blinding your nose. It tested enzymes, as used by Febreze, to break scents down to clear them out of the room.
But ultimately, it landed on an idea that’s part Glade PlugIn, part machine gun.
When setting up the device, you load it with a belt that looks like a bandolier. Instead of bullets, it’s filled with 40 individual essential oils—scents the team refuses to detail but insists are “nothing unusual.” (The order appears irrelevant, but the sheer number helps reduce habituation.) As the bandolier rotates through the night, it uses a bit of heat on the active oil pouch. With a phase-changing material, scent diffuses out when warmed while a large, low-speed fan quietly wafts the scent toward the sleeping person.
“The same moment you feel air from the fan hit you, you get the scent. The moment the fan cuts off, you don’t smell anything,” Garnett says. “This way you get 20 to 30 seconds of scent exposure before the fan tuns off, cools, and clears the room.”
This whole experience is designed to be automatic. Garnett pared back the product, removing lights and test modes to ensure anyone could use it perfectly. When you set up the Memory Air, all you do is slip in the scent belt and hit the “on” button right before bed. From there, it will know when to kick on. And while the scent belt will run out after a month, a subscription ships replacements to customers on a schedule.
A UX you don’t experience
The oddest part of Memory Air is that if it works as advertised, you won’t actually even know it’s working. It runs in your sleep, leaving no olfactory footprint by design. And Leon notes that smells don’t wake people up (smelling salts, incidentally, rouse people through irritation, not scent). In a way, it’s the opposite of sleep tracking. Memory Air isn’t actively measuring anything. Its UX is largely imperceptible. But its value, if it works as research suggests, is that it could vastly impact someone’s mental capacity.
Leon believes users could discover other effects too: In his 2023 study, he discovered people who’d done the olfactory battery got 22 minutes more sleep per night—but he’s validating the idea before making any bold claims around Memory Air as a sleep aid.
“We think there are a number of other medical conditions that may be treatable with this same approach; we’ve identified 139 different medical conditions, all accompanied by olfactory loss,” he says.
Benefits of Memory Air could be significant, while the only real cost is the price itself. Memory Air is available now for $799, including the first month’s scent belt. Replacement belts cost $39 with a monthly subscription.
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