Reading 3 - The Multisensory Perception of Flavour Flashcards
What is Multisensory Perception?
Multisensory integration, also known as multimodal integration, is the study of how information from the different sensory modalities may be integrated by the nervous system. A coherent representation of objects combining modalities enables animals to have meaningful perceptual experiences
ie. How our brain combines what it sees, hears and feel to generate a rich and varied multisensory experience
Need for Multisensory Flavour Perception Study in humans
o Food acquisition has likely been critical evolutionarily, in shaping our brain development
Wang et al., 2004; Sight and smell of appetising food increases brain metabolism by 24% according to a PET study
Multisensory Flavour Perception
The unified percept of flavour, formed by the integrated sensation of taste and smell (ortho and retronasally), the sound food makes, its visual components and the oral-somatosensory qualities including texture, temp and pain etc
Sensory Dominance
Sensory dominance describes a situation where in a given context, whether it is a task or a specific individual, input into one sense is processed preferentially (e.g., faster or more accurately) than inputs into other senses
Examples of Sensory Dominance in Flavour Perception
- Spence 2010
Hard to distinguish fruit flavoured drinks when coloured incongruently.
Drinks were also perceived to taste 11% sweeter simply by dying it red
Uniquely, vision sensory dominance doesn’t seem to occur with salty foods as salty foods tend to be neutral in color - Morrot et al 2001;
A red and white glass of wine were given to students to smell. One week later, this was done again but this time the white wine had been dyed red. The descriptives used to describe the red wine in wk 1 was then used to describe the dyed red white wine in wk 2
This effect also occurred in wine tasters and makers (at a greater scale) as their perception of expected colours and flavours was stronger - Parr et al., 2003
Super additive responses
= when weakly effective stimuli accumulate to give rise to a multisensory experience that is more intense than the simple linear combination of individual parts (synergy)
Seen in the ofc (where pleasantness is determined) in response to congruent combinations of olfactory, gustatory and visual stimuli
Dalton et al., 2000; Sensory Super Additive Responses (flavour)
- Drop sucrose on the tongue, increased the ability to smell a congruent odourant like benzaldehyde (almond). This effect was culture/experience specific as Europeans and north americans showed this effect, there was no multisensory enhancement effect with almond and salty tastes were mixed.The opposite was seen for Japanese participants
- So the brain learns to combine tastes we are used to experiencing together
Why do we perceive flavour in the mouth (when smell is a large part of taste)
- Olfactory and gustatory stimuli, are difficult to localise, but are perceived as emanating from the mouth as they’re refered to the highly localisable tactile sensations associated with mastication
Bacon and Egg Icecream illusion (touch and taste)
- When served alone it’s classes and moderaly pleasant and non-distinguishable in flavour
- When served with fried bread (relatively flavourless) all of a sudden people acknowledge the bacon and egg flavours. (bacon perceptually linked to crunchy bread and egg with silky icecream)
- Zampini and Spence, 2004 - Sound and taste
– had participants eat pringles with different crunch volumes played back in a headset.
- The louder the crisp bite the fresher people felt the crisps were.
- Spence and Shankar 2010; the same was seen in the carbonation of sodas served in a cup (nicer the louder the fizz)
Spence et al., 2010 Vision and Flavour
Vision and Flavour
- Visual cues have a profound effect on both sensory-discriminative and hedonic aspects of multisensory flavour perception
o Spence 2010 Eg. Hard to distinguish fruit flavoured drinks when coloured incongruently.
o May have health implications as beverages can be perceived as 11 per cent simply by colouring it red
o Saltiness however, has not been perceived differently with varying food colours - as salt comes on all coloured food
Morrot et al., 2001 Vision and Flavour
o People were given one red and one white wine to sniff.
The white wine was described with the phrases; lemon, honey and staw
The red wine was labelled with ; prune, chocolate and tobacco
o One week later the same students were asked to do the same, however, this time the white wine was dyed red artificially
o The same descriptors were given to the white wine when it was coloured red
- Parr et al., 2003 Vision and Flavour, Wine Study
– did a similar study as Morrot et al., 2001, on wine tasters and makers to explore this visual dominance effect. The same was seen presumably as the wine expert’s expectations with the taste, aroma and flavour characteristics that are likely to be associated with the wine are that much stronger than in the non-expert.
Bacon and Egg Illusion and Sound
o Heston Blumenthal – bacon and egg icecream is enjoyed more when there’s a farmyard audio played in the background with the sound of sizzling bacon
In a second study, oysters served with ocean noises are more enjoyable
Ambient lighting can alter the taste of wine – Oberfeld et al., 2009
Lighting changes; Riesling enjoyed more under blue and red lighting rather than green or white
Also were willing to pay 50 per cent more for the wine in the right lighting
Blue and green lighting made wines taste spicier and fruitier whilst Riesling was 50 swweater under red lighting than under blue or white
