Aromatherapy just escaped the healing-crystal aisle and wandered straight into neuroscience. In a new study out of Japan, researchers say that wearing rose essential oil on your clothes for a month—basically marinating yourself in grandma-core perfume—actually increased gray matter volume in the brain.

The experiment, published in Brain Research Bulletin (an extremely real journal, despite the energy of its name), tracked more than 50 women who lived four straight weeks of eau de rose exposure. Researchers scanned their brains before and after, splitting participants into two camps: those scented like a botanical gift basket, and those wearing a neutral water solution (the control group, and also kind of the losers in this scenario).

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