11 Chemical Senses and Multisensory Integration Flashcards
Q: What are chemosenses, and why are they important for survival?
A: Chemosenses, including taste and smell, detect chemicals and are important for survival as they help prevent ingestion of toxins and avoid danger.
Q: What are the core tastes?
A: The core tastes are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami.
Q: How do taste bud cells function?
A: Each taste bud cell contains receptors that respond to each of the core tastes.
Q: What substances cause the core tastes?
A:
Sweet: sugars and artificial sweeteners.
Sour: acids.
Bitter: various chemicals like quinine, caffeine, peptides, and phenols.
Salty: salts like NaCl, NH4Cl, and KCl.
Umami: monosodium glutamate, inosine 5’-monophosphate, and guanosine 5’-monophosphate (amino acids).
Q: What is a supertaster?
A: A supertaster is someone with more papillae and taste buds, able to detect certain substances, such as the ‘tasteless’ PROP.
Q: What is the potential 6th taste, and why is it important?
A: The potential 6th taste is ‘starch,’ important for detecting slow-release forms of energy.
Q: How many types of molecules can humans discriminate by smell?
A: Humans can discriminate up to 10,000 types of molecules, and recent research suggests up to 1 trillion.
Q: What are the two routes for smell?
A: The two routes for smell are orthonasal (via inhalation) and retronasal (during chewing and swallowing).
Q: How many different types of smell receptors do humans have?
A: Humans have 350 different types of smell receptors.
Q: How do top-down effects influence smell perception?
A: Top-down effects on smell perception include attention (sniffing and automatic attention), the effect of labeling (e.g., body odor vs. cheese), and the effect of learning (e.g., expert wine tasters).
Q: What is the connection between smell and memory?
A: There is a close link between smell and the limbic system (emotion), known as the “Proust effect,” where vivid memories are brought back by smells.
Q: What social effects can smell have?
A: Smell can have social effects, such as the detection of pheromones, which influence social and reproductive behaviors.
Q: What constitutes flavor when eating?
A: Flavor is a combination of taste and olfaction, influenced by texture, pain, sound, and vision.
Q: How does texture affect our perception of food?
A: The texture of food is significant because the tongue is well represented in the somatosensory cortex. Many foods are widely disliked because of their texture.
Q: How does pain play a role in taste perception?
A: Pain, such as that from chili, activates pain receptors in the tongue. This sensation can be partly suppressed by tastes, with sweet and sour being the most effective, salty intermediate, and bitter being ineffective.
