Scientifically how does the brain know how Spaghetti tastes?

reply to post by neoholographic


If just three colour receptors in your retina enable you to distinguish the almost endless subtleties of hue and shade that you can perceive, why is it so surprising that four (or five) basic taste sensations can, when combined, create the equally vast palette of flavours you can discern in food and drink?

Simple elements can build up into a complex whole, which can in turn be analysed back into its components. Consider, for example, the seemingly miraculous power of Fourier analysis and synthesis.

Besides, it isn't just about taste. There is the role played by scent (already mentioned by several posters) and also the role played by touch (sensations of hot and cold, smoothness and granularity, hardness or softness, toughness or tenderness, etc, etc, etc).

The 'mouth-feel' (as packaged-food marketers call it) of food or drink is as important a part of the experience of eating or drinking as taste or flavour.

I think being able to taste different foods is similar to being able to feel different materials. You can feel soft and texture, your brain can tell differences in different materials and their temperature, I think with our mouth and tongue and as people said how the throat and roof of the mouth leads up to the nose (how people can shoot milk out their nose from laughing) which is important for taste, our brain categorizes the texture or molecular structures of food, and there must be a reciever in the brain that catalogs theses tastes. Life pretty much revolves around eating so its no wonder there are complex mechanisms dedicated in the brain to savoring the splendor of food, and making a pleasure/reward system for eating. I suppose flies and dung beetles have different wiring, so when they find a gold mine of feces to chow down on, they must like it, just as much as me may have liked the spaghetti form it previously was.

Astyanax
reply to post by neoholographic

 

If just three colour receptors in your retina enable you to distinguish the almost endless subtleties of hue and shade that you can perceive, why is it so surprising that four (or five) basic taste sensations can, when combined, create the equally vast palette of flavours you can discern in food and drink?

Simple elements can build up into a complex whole, which can in turn be analysed back into its components. Consider, for example, the seemingly miraculous power of Fourier analysis and synthesis.

Besides, it isn't just about taste. There is the role played by scent (already mentioned by several posters) and also the role played by touch (sensations of hot and cold, smoothness and granularity, hardness or softness, toughness or tenderness, etc, etc, etc).

The 'mouth-feel' (as packaged-food marketers call it) of food or drink is as important a part of the experience of eating or drinking as taste or flavour.

edit on 23/1/14 by Astyanax because: of pronoun abuse.

Yes another example would be how the vast types of materials that exist are made of differing quantities of combinations of a relatively small number of element types. Or how the entirety of English language and books are only composed of altering sequences of 26 letters.

reply to post by neoholographic


It's because of the qualia of Proto-Conscious embedded in space-time at Planck scales.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


So genetics and smell are important. I have noted genetics involved with food, ie. some of us love olives, myself and most of my children, my grandmother, and mother and brother detest them. Also, my tastes are very much like my grandmother, vegetables, fruits, grains, olives, olive oil, and also sweet tooth much the same way. She lived to nearly 90 and overcame cancer without chemo, just the lump removed. My paternal uncle and I both share an allergy to banana's, one that seems to cross over, ie, his children are fine, his brothers child, my brothers child, but mine are fine, and both of us find banana's awful tasting. So genetics plays a huge role in both flavors and in what foods work with your system, for example starches for me have to be well cooked, not al dente, I can't digest them. This also like my grandmother.

But oddly enough, can fine tune tastes in food, and could tell good wines from bad. Unlike a friend who was raised in a wealthy family, and went more for the label or the price, but it was vinegar. A good dry wine, is sour in its first taste only, then it becomes so nutty and fruity that its like you made a mistake, and didn't purchase the 00 after all, because it becomes sweet.

But my nose doesnt work well. One side is blocked and needs surgery but they bungled that, so I'm just waiting, after the move. But it makes my oxygen levels drop at night. And yet I can still fine tune tastes.

So its not just smell...OR, if you have the genes or ability to decipher more information in a food item, and something dampens your abilities, there must be other systems in the brain or body, that take over, much like in some blindness where other senses and areas compensate or activate.

I'm going to throw this one out even though science and technology haven't really studied in depth in the paranormal, aside from some researchers, and perhaps some military work on consciousness, at least in the conventional science.

But some psychics have a clairalience ability, smell. And I've had that happen myself. When it really kicks in its a gateway experience and won't share on this thread. So I would speculate that its more than just our body that knows what scents are, but consciousness/spirit, and this is certainly not our first journey.

I recall the DVD I ordered from Dolores Cannon's workshop on regression and she shared that when she was fine tuning being able to do the workshops, she had several blind women attend, those who blind at birth. Her technique is a visual one for deepening the session, and it works, better than 20 minutes of muscle relaxation, you walk in basically. But she explained to the attendants that had been born blind, that as it required visual, she wasn't sure this would work for them.

She was told, of course it would. And she named her favorite color. It turned out they were right. And Dolores was told that they were shown visuals in meditation and sleep/dreams. You enter into the body suit, and you already are, and have already experienced senses.

So I 'm going to throw this extra thought in anyway.

Unity_99
So its not just smell...OR,

Correct, it's only about 75% smell according to the following source, though I've seen claims of higher figures and I'm not sure how accurate they are, but all seem to agree smell is the large majority of taste:

Why does food seem tasteless when you have a cold?

Have you ever wondered why food loses its flavor when you have a cold? It’s not your taste buds’ fault. Blame your stuffed-up nose. Seventy to seventy-five percent of what we perceive as taste actually comes from our sense of smell. Taste buds allow us to perceive only bitter, salty, sweet, and sour flavors. It’s the odor molecules from food that give us most of our taste sensation.

When you put food in your mouth, odor molecules from that food travel through the passage between your nose and mouth to olfactory receptor cells at the top of your nasal cavity, just beneath the brain and behind the bridge of the nose. If mucus in your nasal passages becomes too thick, air and odor molecules can’t reach your olfactory receptor cells. Thus, your brain receives no signal identifying the odor, and everything you eat tastes much the same. You can feel the texture and temperature of the food, but no messengers can tell your brain, “This cool, milky substance is chocolate ice cream.” The odor molecules remain trapped in your mouth. The pathway has been blocked off to those powerful perceivers of smell--the olfactory bulbs.

So if that 75% of taste being from smell is right, the other 25% still works even if the sense of smell is interrupted. Maybe it does take some training to rely more on the 25% not associated with smell, but you're probably right about it being possible to do that over time with some adaptation.

reply to post by neoholographic


I am glad you used the term 'Qualia'.

I suggest that all those who cannot define the word on their own, as I couldn't at first, consult the definition on Wiki.
'QUALIA'
It should help you get the full meaning of what the poster is asserting here.

I have always had difficulty in convincing people of a certain science FACT.

You can only TASTE when you breath OUT.
You cannot TASTE when you breath IN.

I've had people test this, and some say they taste equally by breathing either in or out.

NOT TRUE!

If you think you taste when you breath IN, that is just a memory...a remnant of a prior experience of taste.
You may recognize the 'taste' by sensing the texture of the food you're eating, but not by the sense of taste itself.

Think about this:
"N'yum n'yum n'yum!"...to express your apreciation of a taste.
While you are n'yum-yumming, you are breathing OUT! That's when the sense of taste kicks in.

That's got to have alot to do with the 75%/25% smell/taste factor that is being discussed here.

rickymouse
Five tastes, you forgot the flavor umami. It is the fifth taste.

Umami is the taste of aged or fermented.... basicly glutamates/glutamines. The spagetti has this taste, so do the tomatoes. Some spices also possess this taste if they are dried.

edit on 23-1-2014 by rickymouse because: (no reason given)

'Umami' comes under the definition of SOUR.
There remain only 4 basic categories, in my reckoning: those mentioned...Salty, Sour, Sweet, Bitter.
Umami is not an extra one.

Starling

rickymouse
Five tastes, you forgot the flavor umami. It is the fifth taste.

Umami is the taste of aged or fermented.... basicly glutamates/glutamines. The spagetti has this taste, so do the tomatoes. Some spices also possess this taste if they are dried.

edit on 23-1-2014 by rickymouse because: (no reason given)

'Umami' comes under the definition of SOUR.
There remain only 4 basic categories, in my reckoning: those mentioned...Salty, Sour, Sweet, Bitter.
Umami is not an extra one.

en.wikipedia.org...

The taste of glutamates, a neural chemical, is not always sour. Breads, and many aged meats are not sour. Sometimes if the some microbes get on them they get a sour taste. Kikkomans soy sauce is not sour. This is a distinct taste from salty also, but a lot of salt is sometimes in thing with glutamates. Tyramines may also share these taste buds.

Your link only talks about four, this link is not right. I think that there may even be another sensor, the nicotine/acetylcholine sensors may have a direct link to the brain and should be considered a taste. The tang from a nitotinic acid pills contents is evident in a lot of things and it is distinguishable from all five of the ones they say there are. Nitrogen is taken up in the mouth.

Also they have found that there are sensors for tasting in the lungs.

This fifth taste was discovered a long time ago. This taste attracts people to foods and is used extensively by the food industries world wide. If the balance in the body gets askew in these chemicals it can cause lots of different problems, many that people are experiencing today.

Umami is in fact new taste, however, not all humans can see the difference.

Its salty/sour with the touch of iron.

Thanks for all the responses. I still don't see any answers to the question.

It's simple, when the nose is clogged up, you can't perceive the flavor of different foods. Recently I had a stuffy nose during Christmas. My family had a Christmas dinner and I couldn't taste anything I ate. I couldn't get any qualia from the food.

This is because I had no Quantum access so to speak. It's the Quantum Mind and maybe even the sense of smell that's been connected to quantum vibrations that's blocked when you have a cold and you can't taste the qualia of the food.

Think of all the different food we eat and all of the different flavors of different foods. If you tried to eat these foods with a cold everything will taste close to the same and very bland.

Why can't the brain perceive how food tastes even when you have a cold if food has an objective taste? When you eat Pizza with a cold you can still see the pizza, so the brain has taste and sight to signal the brain that you're eating pizza, but you still can't taste the qualia of the food.

I also hear some people complain about the use of quantum mechanics. They need to get over it especially with the emerging field of Quantum Biology. These are very smart Scientist and Researchers looking into these areas and people are not going to stick their head in the sand and say "Please no quantum, please no quantum."

The reason people will have trouble with Quantum Biology is because things we call Psi or Paranormal become normal with three little words. Superposition, Non Locality and Entanglement. This is just science.

I also don't mind people seeing Spirituality with Quantum Mechanics. Atheist and Materialist has used Evolution to see godlessness for years. Think off all the books that have misused evolution to support an atheistic or materialist belief.

reply to post by neoholographic

To answer the questioned posed by the title of the OP, and IMHO, the brain doesn’t, and can't, know “scientifically” how spaghetti tastes. The brain can know scientifically what the mechanical/physical process involved in the sensation of taste is. But “how” something tastes is strictly subjective, and out of the realm of science.

Can’t get there from here...

PS: Not even quantum methods will answer this question. There's nothing magical about quantum physics, as opposed to classical physics - they're both symbolic languages used to "objectively" describe what we observe in nature. It's just that quantum physics acknowledges some of the wild, unintuitive aspects of nature that aren't accounted for in classical physics.