Proust had the intuition that olfactory stimuli are very powerful to recall old episodic memories; olfactory function & memory rapidly decline with age; he didn't know that in addition to remembering the past, memory is used to predict the future

Did Proust predict the existence of episodic memory? Michel Baudry. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, February 19 2020, 107191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2020.107191

Highlights
•    Proust had the intuition that olfactory stimuli are very powerful to recall old episodic memories.
•    Olfactory function and memory rapidly decline with age.
•    The hippocampus, in addition to place cells, has odor cells.
•    In addition to remembering the past, memory is used to predict the future.
•    Proust was one of several writers who predicted the existence of episodic memory.

Abstract: Cognitive psychologists have often discussed the idea that when Proust used in his books the concept of involuntary memories, which could be retrieved by an odor or a taste, he was in fact predating the notion of modern episodic memory. Since the publication of his famous “In Search of Lost Time”, considerable progress has been made on our understanding of various types of memory and of the mechanisms involved in different brain circuits and synapses responsible for their long-term storage. This review will focus on the role of hippocampus in episodic memory, including its role in encoding time and various elements of episodes, in particular olfactory information. Our conclusion is that Proust did indeed predict the existence of episodic memory, although he did not realize that, in addition to remembering things past, memory is also used to predict the future.