The smell of food stimulates our appetite. Smell plays such a crucial role in tasting that we can hardly taste anything when we have a runny nose.
On September 12, a research team from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden revealed the relationship between smell and taste. They discovered that simply smelling something activates the 'insula,' the brain region that processes taste, making us feel as if we have actually tasted it.
The team conducted an experiment with 25 adult men and women. The participants smelled a sweet scent and then ate a sweet food, and smelled a savory scent before eating a savory food.
This process allowed them to link the smells with the tastes. Next, the researchers had the participants either only taste the food or only smell the scent, while scanning their brains with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
The analysis revealed that even when participants only smelled the scents, the neural patterns in the insula were similar to when they actually tasted the food. Specifically, smelling a sweet scent produced an insular pattern similar to eating sweet food, and smelling a savory scent resulted in a pattern similar to tasting savory food. Interestingly, the 'olfactory cortex,' the brain region responsible for processing smell, only recognized the presence of a scent but did not differentiate between the two.
The research team stated, "We have discovered that smell is processed not only in the olfactory cortex but also in the insula." They anticipate, "This research can be applied to food development, such as by adding more aroma to food to enhance its flavor."
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Children's Science Donga, October 1, [Science News] Tasting with Just Your Nose!?
