Yes
Lesions to the thalamus have been found to impair the recognition memory of monkeys. In a study conducted by Aggleton and Mishkin, they found that monkeys with lesions to the anterior thalamus and the posterior thalamus had an impaired ability for recognition and associative memory on matching tests.  1 Taste and smell are chemical senses. 2  They give us information about the chemical composition of our surroundings. 3  Taste is an immediate sense-a final checkpoint for the acceptability of food before it enters the body. 1 For many animals, smell is the most important sense. 2  Although for humans smell is not as important as say vision or hearing, we do use smell more than we think to guide behavior. 3  Smell is an important part of taste. 4  Many qualities of foods that we think we taste, are actually a function of smell. By Karl S. Kruszelnicki. Traditionally, we humans have five senses-they're smell, hearing, vision, touch and taste. But only two of these senses are based on chemicals-smell and taste. Smell and taste let us sample the chemicals around us for information. Once the nerves leave the olfactory bulb, they're sent to two main destinations. One of them is the thalamus and the frontal cortex of the brain-here the animal can consciously recognise that it has detected a certain smell. But the other destination exists only in the primates, the two-legged animals. The thalamus receives input from the retina which is relayed to the brain via the optic nerve. Signals are sent to the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus which then forwards them onto the primary visual cortex (area V1) in the occipital lobe. Sleep and wakefulness. The thalamic nuclei are strongly and reciprocally linked with the cerebral cortex. This forms the thalamo-cortico-thalamic circuits which are thought to regulate consciousness and the thalamus plays a significant role in arousal, wakefulness and alertness. One possibility, which is supported by this recent experiment, is that the olfactory cortex has a direct neural link to the hippocampus. In contrast, all of our other senses (sight, touch and hearing) are first processed somewhere else – they go to the thalamus – and only then make their way to our memory center. This helps explain why we’re so dependent on metaphors to describe taste and smell. A new paper by scientists at the Weizmann Institute documents the primal connection between whiffs of smell and episodic memory. This nasal nostalgia is mediated by the hippocampus, the manufacturer of long-term memory in the brain. Thalamus The thalamus is located above the brain stem which is near the center of the brain. It is like a relay station that receives signals from our senses and then passes the signals to its corresponding area in the cerebral cortex. The thalamus receives signals from all our senses except smell. Short term memory allows a person to recall something after a short period of time without practicing or rehearsing. George Miller wrote a paper on short term memory called The magical number 7 +/- 2.. He concluded from his experiments that we could retain 5 to 9 items with our short term memory without rehearsal. Smell is the only one of the five physical senses that is directly linked to the limbic lobe of the brain-our emotional control center. Anxiety, depression, fear, anger, and joy all physically originate from this region. A certain fragrance can evoke memories and emotions before we are even consciously aware of it. The only way to stimulate this gland is with fragrance or through the sense of smell. In other words-the emotional brain responds only to smell and not to words that are read, spoken, heard, or felt by Braille. Our sense of smell links directly to emotional states and behaviors often stored since childhood. By Dr Ananya Mandal, MD. The thalamus is a vital structure lying deep within the brain that has several important functions. There are extensive nerve networks that send signals all around the structures of the brain including the cerebral cortex. The thalamus is involved in sensory and motor signal relay and the regulation of consciousness and sleep. Aside from sense of smell, all other sensory processes involve a thalamic nucleus receiving a sensory signal which is then directed to the relevant cortical area. Sleep and wakefulness. The thalamic nuclei are strongly and reciprocally linked with the cerebral cortex. This forms the thalamo-cortico-thalamic circuits which are thought to regulate consciousness and the thalamus plays a significant role in arousal, wakefulness and alertness. When you first smell a new scent, you link it to an event, a person, a thing or even a moment. Your brain forges a link between the smell and a memory -- associating the smell of chlorine with summers at the pool or lilies with a funeral. When you encounter the smell again, the link is already there, ready to elicit a memory or a mood. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrospective_memory http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/psych115s/notes/lecture11/ http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/06/28/313347.htm http://www.news-medical.net/health/What-does-the-Thalamus-do.aspx http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/11/09/smell-and-memory/ http://www.alleydog.com/topics/memory.php http://www.biospiritual-energy-healing.com/essential-oils-affect-our-minds.html http://www.news-medical.net/health/What-does-the-Thalamus-do.aspx http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/smell3.htm
does smell based memory affect the thalamus?