Mind games

WHY, when you smell freshly cut grass, are you suddenly transported back to childhood, playing in the garden on hazy summer nights?

Then there are those agonising moments in exams or work meetings, when facts you once learned completely vanish. Everyone knows what these nostalgic and frustrating moments feel like, and everyone knows they’re related to our memory, but how do our memories actually work?

“Memory is very sensory,” explains Steve Tromans, a neuro-linguistic programming practitioner.