Neurogastronomy brings together chefs, neuroscientists, behavioral psychologists, and biochemists in an effort to study how all of our senses stimulate the brain while we eat and how this knowledge can be used to make us perceive food differently [3]. Imagine that you come across a piece of pecan pie on the dining room table. You see a double layered, crisply cut triangular wedge containing golden brown pie-filling topped with a layer of perfectly roasted pecans.
The visual appearance alone may be enough to draw you towards the food. As you sink your teeth into the pie, sugar molecules bind to sweet receptors on the taste buds of your tongue, which then activate sweet responsive areas in the gustatory cortex — the perceptual taste center of your brain.
However, a large part of the pie flavor also comes from its smell. There are two types of smell: orthonasal and retronasal. When you sniff something from a distance, such as the whiff of pecans as you stand several feet away from the pie, you are performing orthonasal smelling. Retronasal smelling occurs when you swallow food. As you close your mouth and exhale through your nose, a puff of air is pushed past olfactory receptor neurons in your nose [4]. As you continue to chew on the pie, the cracking sound you hear as you bite into the crunchy pecans also contributes to how sweet you perceive the flavor.
Eating different foods produces sounds of varying frequencies, which is measured in Hertz Hz. Recent research has shown that high frequency sounds enhance the sweetness in food, while low frequency sounds bring out the bitterness [6]. Several studies have found that as food hardness decreases, perceived flavor intensity increases [7]. Surprisingly, even how food is served alters the perception of its flavor.
For example, rough spoons create the sensation of saltiness without any added sodium. Food served on specifically colored plates and desserts shaped in a rounded, as opposed to rectangular, form can naturally boost the perception of sweetness [8]. So, it is likely that the pecan pie would taste sweeter if you ate it off of a white plate as opposed to a black one, and if it were presented as a circular piece instead of a triangular one [9].
Information about the pie from each of the senses are combined in higher order cortical brain regions to give the full pecan pie flavor Figure 1. However, understanding how non-taste-related sensations impact flavor could drive healthy eating without any additional cost. A healthier diet would reduce or curb the growing obesity epidemic and the risks affiliated with being obese, such as artery disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart attacks [11].
Furthermore, neurogastronomy findings are already being incorporated in some restaurants to enhance the dining experience. Part of the dining experience involves using the headphones to first hear the sounds of the waves and seagulls before eating, which customers claim makes the fish taste fresher and better [6].
In addition, neurogastronomy studies may help patients who have lost the ability to taste or smell. This challenge was already put to the test at the first international neurogastronomy conference held at the University of Kentucky in November of At this conference, top chefs competed to create the perfect dish that would best appeal to all of the senses of two chemotherapy patients [2]. By building on knowledge about how textures, smells, appearances, and sounds of food affect flavor perception, the chefs were able to create highly enjoyable dishes for both patients [2].
Thus, science is starting to uncover how all of our senses contribute and work together to give us the perception of flavor. In the future, we may be able to entice kids to love broccoli by presenting it together within a perfect combination of color, texture, sound, and smell.
Now, imagine the possibilities if we could go a step further and trick our brains into thinking that spinach tastes like chocolate. What if it were possible to make foods taste better by manipulating neural signals in our brain rather than modifying the ingredients within foods or even stimulating the right combination of senses to enhance flavor? Although direct neural modifications to change taste perception are still far from fruition in humans, recent research in taste processing has discovered ways to make this possible in rodents.
However, recent findings from Dr. Further experiments confirmed the essential roles of these cortical fields in sweet and bitter taste recognition. References: Sweet and bitter taste in the brain of awake behaving animals. Epub Nov PMID: Site Menu Home.
Search Health Topics. Search the NIH Guide. NIH Research Matters. When we eat, our tongue is bombarded with tastants. How is their detection and transduction of information organised so that the appropriate response is elicited? This model predicts that taste receptor cells are broadly tuned, responding to many tastants. Support for this theory, says Kinnamon, comes from electrical recordings from receptor cells and from nerves innervating the taste buds that show that one cell can respond to more than one taste quality.
Zuker and Ryba's recent work strongly suggests that taste-coding for bitter, sweet, and umami fits the labelled-line model in the periphery of the taste system.
Their expression data show that receptors for these qualities are expressed in distinct populations of taste cells.
These data, says Zuker, support the labelled-line model. The mice were attracted to the synthetic ligand, which they normally ignore, indicating that dedicated pathways mediate attractive behaviours. The researchers plan similar experiments to see whether the same is true for aversive behaviours. Even with all these molecular data, the cross-fibre model of taste-coding still has its supporters—just how many depends on whom one talks to. Both Damak and Kinnamon, for example, believe that there is at least some involvement of cross-fibre patterning even in the taste receptor cells.
But, says neurobiologist and olfaction expert Lawrence C. Bartoshuk also says the debate is decided in favour of the labelled-line model in the periphery. The crossfibre model is an interesting historical footnote, she comments. Whether this putative link between taste perception and health can be confirmed and whether it will be possible to manipulate food preferences to improve health remain to be seen.
However, it seems certain that, as in the past five years, the next five years will see large advances in our knowledge of many aspects of taste, a fascinating and important sensory system. The periphery of the taste sensory system has yielded many of its secrets, but relatively little is known about the transduction pathways in taste, how taste cells talk to the nervous system, or about events further downstream in the brain.
How are signals from taste receptors integrated with those from olfactory receptors to form a representation of complex food flavours, for example? With their expanding molecular toolbox, researchers can now delve deeper into these aspects of taste perception. This may tell us not only about taste but about how the nervous system in general is put together, says Ryba. But understanding taste is not just an academic exercise.
It has practical uses too. The molecular receptive ranges of human TAS2R bitter taste receptors. Download references. We would like to thank all the volunteer participants that gave their time to contribute to this study. AS has been financed by a Ph. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. AES and PS performed the analysis. All authors read and approved the final paper. Correspondence to Michael G. Blum , Evelyne Heyer or Mattias Jakobsson. The research was approved by the Comite de protection des personnes—Ill de France 1, Paris, France, under the dossier numbers: DC and avril For Cameroon, written and audio-recorded informed consent was obtained from all participants for the collected phenotypic and genetic data.
For Uzbekistan, participants gave written informed consent for the collected phenotypic and genetic data. Reprints and Permissions. Taste perception and lifestyle: insights from phenotype and genome data among Africans and Asians.
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Journal of NeuroVirology Advanced search. Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature. Subjects Evolutionary biology Population genetics. Abstract Taste is essential for the interaction of animals with their food and has co-evolved with diet. Access through your institution. Buy or subscribe. Rent or Buy article Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.
References 1. Google Scholar 9. CAS Google Scholar Google Scholar PubMed Google Scholar Acknowledgements We would like to thank all the volunteer participants that gave their time to contribute to this study.
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