Taste is a vital sense. The sense of smell, which acts together with the sense of taste, enables humans and animals to recognize and evaluate what they eat and drink.
Taste and smell are chemical senses. Receptors in the nose and mouth bind incoming molecules and generate electrical signals that are sent to the brain. Large sets of signals pass along the nerves of the skull.
The tongue is the main sensory organ for tasting. Our tongue is the most flexible muscular organ in our body, and this flexibility is crucial for nutrition and communication. Neurological studies on the tongue shows that taste is felt equally in every part of the tongue. Since there are enough nerves in the structure of the tongue, it easily sends information about taste to the brain.
The brain forms its perception of taste based on taste and retronasal odor, a type of smell. Brain imaging studies have shown that retronasal odor activates many regions in the brain.
While explaining the sense of taste, an interesting topic to focus on is ‘conditioned taste aversion’. When a food makes you sick, i.e. spoiled, it can cause you to find it repulsive or disgusting afterwards. If a food is paired with nausea, as animal research has shown, we are talking about negative taste conditioning. It is a powerful form of learning and can be learned in just one experience and can last for years.
“TASTE is a unique sense” We can only define taste by categorizing it:
Sweet: Usually associated with high-calorie foods rich in energy.
Sour: Sourness is a condition related to the acidity of things. It can signal unripe or spoiled food.
Salty: Many chemical salts give a salty taste, including sodium molecules.
Bitter: Associated with natural toxins. It is often considered an unpleasant flavor, although sometimes it is added to foods intentionally.
In recent years, a 5th taste has been introduced, ‘appetizing, or Umami’, which means delicious.
The most important question is: “How are these taste qualities represented in our brains?”
Taste perception falls within the field of neuromarketing and can be revealed through neurological measurements, that is, by measuring brain waves. The scores used in this measurement are ‘Liking, Mental Effort, Attention and Excitement’. The EEG method that is used involves the measurment of the changes in brain electrical activity that occur in cognitive processes with electrodes placed on the scalp. The EEG analyzes the ‘reward center of the brain’, the ‘limbic system’ and the ‘thalamus’ on the cortex.
Reference: Rita Carter
