Why food becomes tasteless when the nose is clogged
December 23rd, 2009 - 1:19 pm ICT by ANILondon, Dec 23 (ANI): Researchers have revealed why food tastes wrong when the nose is clogged.
The team from Brandeis University showed that accurate taste perception relies on functioning olfactory system.
Lead researcher and neuroscientist Don Katz showed that if the taste cortex in rats is inactivated when a rat first smells an odour, at least a food odour, then the rat subsequently will only recognize the food associated with that odour if the taste cortex is again inactivated.
“We discovered that rats use their taste system to smell with, so when you knock out the taste cortex, even for an hour, as we did, you alter their sense of smell,” Nature magazine quoted Katz as saying.
The researchers added, “this is the only example of state dependency in neural circuit function of which we are aware.”
During the study, researchers introduced a demonstrator rat that had just eaten chow flavoured with one of four spices to a subject rat, which then smelled the demonstrator rat’s breath.
The subject rat was later offered two choices of chow: one dish with the same flavour previously consumed by the demonstrator rat and another with a different flavour.
The study shoed that subject rat reliably preferred the food that it had previously smelled on the demonstrator rat’s breath the day before.
The researchers concluded that the social “smell test” of rat’s breath is a good enough cue for rats to prefer one food over another.
At the outset they predicted that the rat’s sense of smell would not be affected by changes in its taste system.
“Most surprisingly, the rats whose taste cortex was knocked out again the next day preferred the chow that they had experienced in an altered state, with no taste cortex.
“We discovered in this experiment that the sensory systems don’t work in isolation from each other, said Katz.
“One part of the cortex takes direct input from the nose, and one part from the tongue, and while it’s convenient to think that the nose and taste receptors operate independently, they don’t,” Katz added.
The findings appear in journal Nature Neuroscience. (ANI)
- Blocked nose does play spoilsport with taste buds - Dec 23, 2009
- 'Smelly food' can keep you off unwanted pounds - Mar 25, 2012
- Snot affects out sense of smell: Study - Dec 02, 2010
- How mice sniff out whether food is safe to eat - Jul 16, 2010
- If you eat junk during pregnancy, your kids will too - Dec 03, 2010
- Anxiety helps people sniff out danger - Mar 23, 2012
- Odours can help cut salt in food - Aug 15, 2011
- How the sights and smells of booze can turn people into alcoholics - Sep 02, 2010
- Now, a technology that changes cookie flavour as per your taste - Aug 10, 2010
- Mother's milk define kid's taste - Feb 20, 2011
- How smells are detected and processed by the brain - Mar 26, 2011
- Desert ant in Tunisia first animal known to navigate by stereo smell - Mar 02, 2010
- Source of insect buzz around beer identified - Nov 20, 2011
- Failing smell can be reversed with training - Nov 21, 2011
- Fruit fly's response to starvation could help regulate human appetite - Apr 01, 2011
Tags: brandeis university, chow, cortex, direct input, flavour, isolation, katz, nature magazine, neural circuit, odour, outset, rats, sense of smell, sensory systems, smell test, spices, study researchers, taste perception, taste system, two choices
