Interesting. I think I know what you mean about taste and smell. BUT for me, just like when I see something or read something traumatizing and keep randomly seeing the images over and over in a fairly obtrusive way, if I smell something absolutely awful, I will get sort of "smell flashbacks" for a few days or even weeks.

The worst one that ever happened was when I was a massage therapist, working on an old man. He had these blackheads on his back the size of pencil erasers and when I put any pressure on his skin they would poop themselves out and the further out they came the worse they smelled, like rotting pork, but mixed with poorly cleaned dentures. I drove myself crazy cleaning my equipment, studio and self because I kept smelling it no matter what I did for weeks. I started carrying a bottle of lavender essential oil to sniff when it got bad.

Since then I tell all my male friends to start getting back facials by the time they're 40 and keep doing it at least annually until they die.