The Multisensory perception of
Flavour
by Charles Spence and Betina Piqueras-Fiszman
Flavour: one of the most
multisensory of our
every day experiences
rapid growth of interest from scientist
over the last few years (small 2004,
Small and Prescott 2005 et al)
cognitive neuroscience
complementing
traditional
techniques of food science
to create great-tasting dishes
search for the multisensory
flavour perception
how each of the diner's senses
(vision, taste, smell, sound and touch)
to the overall experience of flavour
which senses dominate and
how can better meet diner's sensory expectations?
Flavour = Complex combination
of the olfactory, gustatory, and
trigeminal sensations perceived during tasting
(source: International standards organisation (ISO 5492 2008)
Flavour = influenced by tactile,
thermal, painful and kinaesthetic effects (Delwiche 2004)
The Delwiche's definition is being challenged by researchers now (Auvray Spence 2008, Stevenson 2009 et al)
Delwiche is too narrow and there is more to flavour than that.
current studies looked at how sound influence our taste,
visual attributes affect our sensory discriminative attributes of food and our hedonist responses to a dish.
studies with smell
orthonasal system - inhalation of external odours
retronasal - detection of odours - forced to the back of the nasal cavity during this process.
both influence smell at the
subjective and perceptual level
(Rozin 1982, Diaz 2004)
two parts of the brain process
these two kinds of sensory input (Small et al 2005)
= both key for the multisensory flavour perception
Two categories of multisensory flavour: (different brain mechanisms associated in these two cases)
1) exteropceptive senses of vision, audition,
and orthonasal olfaction - typically stimulated prior to and during consumption of food (MORE COMPLEX COMBINATION OF CUES TO INTERPRET THAT)
one important cue is expectancy effects (Deliza MacFie 1997, Hutchings 2003, Cardello 2007)
colour and visual form of the food - 'eye appeal is half the meal' or the orthonasal olfactory cues and distal food sounds (sizzle of the steak)
setting up powerful expectation regarding the food that the diner is about to eat.
2) interoceptive senses of taste, retronasal smell, oral-somatosenation and sounds associated with the consumption of food - stimulated while a diner is eating (MORE AUTOMATIC)
Multisensory integration:
if constrast between exteroceptive and
actual interoceptive information is big
contrast may occur.
Assimilation / contrast model
used by food scientists
to look at multisensory integration
on people's hedonic responses and perception of food (Yeomans et al 2008)
Taste: sweet, sour, salty, bitter,
umami (Shiffman 2002)
metallic (Lindemann 1996)
electric taste (Keeley 2002)
Our taste receptors in out tongue
evenly spaced over the
tongue surface (lots of taste cells = fungiform papillae)
taste buds densely packed
at the tip of the tongue (Todrank and Bartoshuk 1991)
Basic tastes? or can we call them basic?
Some scientists believe we
have more than 20 distinct basic tastes
Taste = gustation = sense in which one can see the largest individual differences in terms
of the number of sensory receptors that people have.
16 fold variation in the
density of taste buds between people
(miller and reedy 1990)
that explains people differ in terms of sensitivity
to their gustatory stimuli
SUPER TASTERS!
sensitive to bitter-tasting -
phenylthiocarbamide (PTC)