This document provides an overview of multi-sensory taste perception and research from the Crossmodal Research Laboratory. It discusses how all the senses including taste, smell, sound, visual, and touch influence our perception and enjoyment of food. Key points include that we have difficulty distinguishing between tastes and smells, visual cues can strongly impact flavor perception, and sensory incongruity between different senses can elicit unexpected responses. Neuroscience research aims to better understand these multi-sensory interactions and apply them to designing novel food experiences.

1. Introduction to Multi-Sensory
Taste Perception

2. ‘Cooking is probably the most multisensual art. I
try to stimulate all the senses.’
(Ferran Adrià, El Bulli)

3. “ Neuroscientists have come to realise that their
insights, from studies of the multisensory
integration can be extended to help explain
flavour perception
Psychology and cognitive neuroscience can help
create novel flavours, taste sensations and
dining experiences that can more effectively
stimulate the mind, and not just the mouth, of
the consumer”
Professor Charles Spence head of the Crossmodal Research
Laboratory based at the Department of Experimental
Psychology, Oxford University

4. Areas of Interest
• How all the senses play their own roles in our
appreciation of food
• How our enjoyment of food is affected by
other influences, our environment, our
mood, how it is presented, who prepares
it, etc.

5. Taste Perception

6. Perception of Flavour

7. One thing is certain, we all find it extremely difficult
to distinguish between tastes and smells

8. The Ventriloquist In Your Mouth
• When bacon and egg ice-cream was first
created, it was only moderately pleasant
• The breakthrough came when a piece of crispy
fried bread was added to the plate
• It appears as though the bacon is ‘ventriloquised’
towards, and hence becomes perceptually
localised within, the crispy bread, while the eggy
flavour stays behind in the more texturally
appropriate soft ice-cream

9. Aroma Sensitivity
• Humans remarkable sense of smell
• We can distinguish a diversity of odors-
approximately 10,000 scents
• Scent through the back of the mouth is called
retronasal olfaction
• Scents via the nostrils it is called orthonasal
olfaction

10. Taste Sensitivity
• Taste sensitivity refers to the intensity with which you perceive tastes and
flavors
• People with high taste sensitivity experience tastes, and usually
smells, too, as being very strong
• They are also able to distinguish individual flavors in a mixture very well
Measuring Taste Sensitivity
• People who have the active gene will taste the bitterness of
PROP, whereas people who have an inactive gene will not taste anything
• The more taste buds you have; the stronger the taste signal your brain
receives, whether from PROP or from natural food
• The more attentive you are to a stimulus, the stronger it may seem

11. Taster Types
Mildly sensitive tasters Moderately sensitive Highly sensitive tasters
tasters
Weak to undetectable Moderate to strong Very strong sensation
sensation from PROP and sensation from PROP and from PROP and mint
mint mint
The flavor of food is not The flavor of food is The flavor of food is
that important important important
Many foods liked; few Many foods liked; few Great variation in the
foods disliked; not foods disliked; often number of foods liked;
passionate about food passionate about food often passionate about
food

12. • Mildly sensitive • Moderately • Highly sensitive
taster sensitive taster taster
• This tongue is
• The fungiform • The fungiform covered with
papillae are the papillae on this fungiform
small pinkish dots tongue are larger papillae.
on this tongue and more rounded
than those of a • Note that this
tongue does not
• Note that they are mildly sensitive have any blue
small and seed- taster areas like those in
shaped the other tongues

13. Taste Changes With Age

14. The Geography of Taste
Map shows the prevalence of the ability to taste a prop The darker the area in this map the
higher the percentage of the native population of the area who can taste PTC
Over 85% in the darkest areas, and as low as 5% in the lightest.

15. Taste Smell and Reasoning
• Mildly sensitive tasters tend rely more on logical reasoning
to arrive at decisions than do other tasters
• Moderately sensitive tasters are more likely to "play things
by ear" and improvise
• Highly sensitive tasters tend to spend time mulling things
over, often "sleeping" on a problem if it is complex
• Strong tasters of PROP, and people who sense coolness
when they taste mints, say :
– The crackle of flames of a wood fire stimulate my imagination
– My thoughts often don't occur as words but as visual images
– I like to watch cloud shapes change in the sky
– I can be deeply moved by a sunset.

16. Food Stimulates all our senses

17. We have to know what we are eating
• We also need to react emotionally
•Do we like it? is it poison? Should we enjoy it or spit it out?
• Flavor messages go to the emotional centers

18. Sensory Dominance
• Many studies published
over the last 75 years have
shown that visual cues
(especially those concerned
with a food or drink’s
colour) can have a profound
effect on both the sensory-
discriminative and hedonic
aspects of multisensory
flavour perception

19. The pleasure of food is critically dependent on
all sensory attributes being right, and so food
can, for instance, shock us simply by serving it
at the wrong temperature, or if it has an
inappropriate colour

20. Factors That Affect Food Perception
• Sight: the visual attributes of the stimulus will likely evoke expectations
• Taste: the tongue, palate, soft palate, and areas in the upper throat detect
sensations
• Smell: the receptors of the olfactory system detect molecules in the air
• Chemesthisis: mediates information about irritants through nerve endings
• Texture: Texture plays a major role in our recognition of foods
• Temperature: we have expectations for the serving temperature for most
foods and beverages
• Hearing: this can set expectations, effect how we experience textures

21. Sight
Sound
Texture
Temperature

22. Sensory Incongruity
• The deliberate mismatching of the sensory
attributes of a dish or food product
• Sensory incongruity can elicit negative as well
as positive responses
• Sensory incongruity is more challenging

23. Sensory Incongruity
• There is always a possibility that when the ‘moment of
truth’ comes, and any one (or more) of the other sensory
properties of the product do not match up to the
expectations that have been created by one of the other
senses
• The likely reaction of a diner to such an experience
depends on
– The nature of the sensory incongruity involved
– Whether the incongruity is hidden or visible
– The situation or context in which the incongruity is experienced
– The person who happens to be experiencing it

24. Adaption and Suppression
• Adaptation: When subject to a constant stimulus, the senses become less
responsive
• Mixture Suppression: The phenomenon that individual taste and smell
characteristics are perceived as less intense in mixtures than alone

25. Environment

26. Presentation and Display

27. A Little Research….
What flavour would you expect these drinks to be?