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Several studies have demonstrated flavour perception can be altered by a food’s hardness or viscosity 4, 5, 6. Animals, of course, use mechanosensory information to help determine their food’s precise location 3, but it is the food’s physical properties (for example, its hardness or viscosity) that contribute to determining its palatability. Texture is a product of mechanosensation.
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In particular, we are interested in the ways neural circuits integrate taste and texture information. Because of these difficulties, we suggest the exploration of simpler model systems can help extend our understanding of the multisensory perception of flavour that directs feeding decisions. This is partly due to difficulties with parsing the individual components that make up the gestalt of flavour perception, and partly due to technical difficulties associated with the controlled delivery of precisely defined multimodal stimuli.
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Psychologists and neuroscientists have begun to explore the ways the individual channels of sensory input affect the perception of flavour, but our understanding of cross-modal interactions lags behind. Who hasn’t noticed a change in a food’s flavour on catching a cold severe enough to block their sense of smell?ĭespite its obvious importance, the mechanisms by which multimodal sensory information is incorporated into feeding decisions are not well understood. In fact, we all have direct experience with the interaction of multiple sensory modalities in the general perception of food quality. What we humans call ‘flavour’ is actually a complex multisensory picture of a food’s general desirability 2. Although a food’s taste is a major determinant of its acceptability, animals must assess a food’s visual appearance, smell, temperature and texture as well. Animals use their sense of taste to discriminate nutritious foods and toxic substances 1. Animals must eat to survive, but not all food sources are equally desirable.