Olfaction the amygdala and is involved in emotional and autonomic responses to odor. It also projects to the hippocampus and is involved in motivation and memory. Odor information is stored in long-term memory and has strong connections to emotional memory. This is possibly due to the olfactory system's close anatomical ties to the limbic system and hippocampus, areas of the brain that have long been known to be involved in emotion and place memory, respectively. Since any one receptor is responsive to various odorants, and there is a great deal of convergence at the level of the olfactory bulb, it may
Hippocampal memory encoding and retrieval There are two steps to encoding: acquisition and consolidation. During acquisition, stimuli are committed to short term memory. Consolidation is where the hippocampus along with other cortical structures stabilize an object within long term memory, a process strengthening over time and one for which a number of theories have arisen to explain. After encoding, the hippocampus is capable of going through the retrieval process. The retrieval process consists of accessing stored information; this allows learned behaviors to experience conscious depiction and execution. Encoding and retrieval are both affected by neurodegenerative and anxiety disorders and epilepsy. Meta-positron emission tomography (PET) analysis