New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Science News
from research organizations

From Delicious To Death: Understanding Taste

Date:
February 27, 2008
Source:
Monell Chemical Senses Center
Summary:
Despite the significance of taste to both human gratification and survival, a basic understanding of this primal sense is still unfolding. A new primer provides a clear and accessible overview of recent advances in understanding human taste perception and its underlying biology.
Share:
FULL STORY

Despite the significance of taste to both human gratification and survival, a basic understanding of this primal sense is still unfolding.

Taste provides both pleasure and protection. Often taken for granted, the sense of taste evaluates everything humans put into their mouths. Taste mediates recognition of a substance and the final decision process before it is either swallowed and taken into the body, or rejected as inappropriate.

A new primer written by scientists at the Monell Center and Florida State University and published in the February 26 issue of Current Biology, provides a clear and accessible overview of recent advances in understanding human taste perception and its underlying biology.

Within the past few years, identification of receptors for sweet, bitter and umami (savory) taste has led to new insights regarding how taste functions, but many questions remain to be answered. The Current Biology primer reviews the current state of knowledge regarding how taste stimuli are detected and ultimately translated by the nervous system into the perceptual experiences of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami.

Such perceptual evaluations are related to the function and ultimately, the consequences, of taste evaluation. These can range from pleasurable emotional reactions, for example the delight a child receives from a sweet candy, to the critical life-dependent response that causes a person to spit out a bitter potential toxin.

Author Paul A.S. Breslin, PhD, a sensory scientist at the Monell Center, observes, "For all mammals, the collective influence of taste over a lifetime has a huge impact on pleasure, health, well being, and disease. Taste's importance to our daily lives is self-evident in its metaphors -- for example: the 'sweetness' of welcoming a newborn child, the 'bitterness' of defeat, the 'souring' of a relationship, and describing a truly good human as the 'salt' of the earth."

Coauthor of the review is Alan C. Spector, PhD, Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at Florida State University. See: http://www.current-biology.com/content/article/fulltext?uid=PIIS0960982207023706


Story Source:

Materials provided by Monell Chemical Senses Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Cite This Page:

Monell Chemical Senses Center. "From Delicious To Death: Understanding Taste." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 February 2008. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226092757.htm>.
Monell Chemical Senses Center. (2008, February 27). From Delicious To Death: Understanding Taste. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226092757.htm
Monell Chemical Senses Center. "From Delicious To Death: Understanding Taste." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226092757.htm (accessed March 28, 2024).

Explore More

from ScienceDaily

RELATED STORIES