Have you ever had a far-off memory triggered by a taste of something? A whiff of a scent? A reminiscence brought back from a remote corner of your mind, almost forgotten?

Congratulations: you had what is called in French "une madeleine de Proust".

Cognitive psychologists call it "the Proust phenomenon".

That's because Marcel Proust -- that famous French writer -- gave the most resounding account of this, of involuntary memory.

He recounted in the first volume of his (gigantic) novel "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" (In Search of Lost Time) about how, when his mother brought him a madeleine and tea, he was propelled back into the past when his aunt used to do the same when she cared for him while he was ill in bed.

It was a powerful moment for him.

On a technical level, it's all about how the brain's hippocampus - responsible for short and long-term memory -- is especially keyed into our senses, particularly taste and smell.

But for me, it's the very art of exploring this Proust phenomenon that resonates in me. That's how I see the world.

While a madeleine de Proust doesn't come across often, you can at least replicate the literary set-up.

You can do that by visiting Paris and picking up a madeleine at a pâtisserie.... or you can cook your own madeleines, wherever you are.

That's what I did -- prepared my own batch of hot madeleines, to bite into with a pot of tea....

*** Shot on an iPhone, edited on an iPad with LumaFusion, animation through Procreate ***


+++ Music via:
Artlist.io
"Reminiscing" by Yotam Ishay
"Flower Duet" by Hawkins
"Raise Your Glass (To Another Year)" by Ziggy
"Little Eyes" by Yehezkel Raz
"Finding My Memories" by Yehezkel Raz
"Coriolis" by REW
"Black Cat" by Vicki McCrone
"Broken Radiance" by Kyle Preston
"Tempted" by The Hazelnuts
"Rohi" by Randy Sharp

incompetech.com
Magic Escape Room by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

Musopen.org
"Pizzicato" (piano arrangement) by Sylvia
Licenced under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

+++ Additional stock images
Pexels (copyright free, free to use: https://www.pexels.com/license/)
- the timelapse night sky by Dmitry Varennikov
- the old photos piled on each other by Roman Odintsov
- the seahorse by Rachel Claire

The Internet Archive for the computer images of the brain (presented in my video for educational purpose, with a minimal 27 seconds used, of original source file of academic video with a 27min33sec runtime)
- "The Human Brain: A Dynamic View of Its Structures and Organization" (1975)