Fascinating read, thank you! I work as a chocolate educator, and explaining how flavours are perceived and that taste is actually in the brain more than just on our tongue is always a challenge. Grateful for this thorough article about the neuroscience background.
Wow, sounds like a dream job... I love chocolate! I can't imagine how challenging it must be trying to explain all of this to the people you work with! You're right, in fact, taste is actually predicted, top-down from the brain, and your tongue is confirming the prediction, more than it's actually "tasting" things! I wrote about how "predictive processing" works in another blog you might enjoy! It's called: "Your Brain Predicted This Title BEFORE You Read It—Here’s How 🧠"
What I was referring to when I said taste is actually in the brain, I thought about the neural networks that fire up when they get a certain sensory information from our senses (sight, smell, taste). At the chocolate competition where I judge, we use a flavour profiling system backed by neuroscience, where flavour notes are grouped based on the molecules they are made up of.
But it is also true that seeing tasting notes on a chocolate bar, or even a bar's colour can cause us to predict flavour notes, even though we might actually taste something different (we have different associations, different sensitivity to specific notes).
🖐🏼Question: What if you've never tasted a particular word. Say, a lemon, how would you make the taste sensation connection? I've never tasted a durian fruit, so if I had Lexical-Gustatory it wouldn't make sense that I would be able to taste the word. You must have the connection made through experience, right? With that being said, each new experience would add new flavors to your dictionary...🤔
VERY astute question, and you’re right! The brain needs some kind of “reference flavor” stored in memory to pull from. If you’ve never actually tasted durian, then the word durian wouldn’t trigger the real taste of durian, because you don’t have that template yet.
What’s interesting, though, is that for people with lexical-gustatory synesthesia, the brain doesn’t always map words to their literal tastes anyway. Sometimes it fills the gap with something else, like a taste from a rhyme, a childhood food memory, or even just a random flavor that somehow got “wired” to the sound or spelling of the word. So “lemon” might taste like Skittles for one person instead of an actual lemon.
But yes, every new food experience expands the “flavor dictionary.” Once you do taste durian, your brain now has that stored pattern, and the word durian could start pulling up that new taste. It’s almost like your vocabulary of tastes evolves alongside your language. We don't know that for sure, but what you're asking begs this question.
Fascinating read, thank you! I work as a chocolate educator, and explaining how flavours are perceived and that taste is actually in the brain more than just on our tongue is always a challenge. Grateful for this thorough article about the neuroscience background.
Wow, sounds like a dream job... I love chocolate! I can't imagine how challenging it must be trying to explain all of this to the people you work with! You're right, in fact, taste is actually predicted, top-down from the brain, and your tongue is confirming the prediction, more than it's actually "tasting" things! I wrote about how "predictive processing" works in another blog you might enjoy! It's called: "Your Brain Predicted This Title BEFORE You Read It—Here’s How 🧠"
Thanks, I will check this out.
What I was referring to when I said taste is actually in the brain, I thought about the neural networks that fire up when they get a certain sensory information from our senses (sight, smell, taste). At the chocolate competition where I judge, we use a flavour profiling system backed by neuroscience, where flavour notes are grouped based on the molecules they are made up of.
But it is also true that seeing tasting notes on a chocolate bar, or even a bar's colour can cause us to predict flavour notes, even though we might actually taste something different (we have different associations, different sensitivity to specific notes).
Where are these chocolate-tasting competitions? I'd like to volunteer as tribute!😅
You wouldn't be the only one I'm afraid 😅 I judge for the International Chocolate Awards.
🖐🏼Question: What if you've never tasted a particular word. Say, a lemon, how would you make the taste sensation connection? I've never tasted a durian fruit, so if I had Lexical-Gustatory it wouldn't make sense that I would be able to taste the word. You must have the connection made through experience, right? With that being said, each new experience would add new flavors to your dictionary...🤔
VERY astute question, and you’re right! The brain needs some kind of “reference flavor” stored in memory to pull from. If you’ve never actually tasted durian, then the word durian wouldn’t trigger the real taste of durian, because you don’t have that template yet.
What’s interesting, though, is that for people with lexical-gustatory synesthesia, the brain doesn’t always map words to their literal tastes anyway. Sometimes it fills the gap with something else, like a taste from a rhyme, a childhood food memory, or even just a random flavor that somehow got “wired” to the sound or spelling of the word. So “lemon” might taste like Skittles for one person instead of an actual lemon.
But yes, every new food experience expands the “flavor dictionary.” Once you do taste durian, your brain now has that stored pattern, and the word durian could start pulling up that new taste. It’s almost like your vocabulary of tastes evolves alongside your language. We don't know that for sure, but what you're asking begs this question.
This was both fun and fascinating! The word lemon makes me salivate. Can’t say I taste lemon though.
That's normal gustatory function right there, great distinction though!