Mechanisms of Taste- & Taste-Olfaction Mixture Detection

味觉机制-

• 批准号: 6888598
• 负责人: LAWRENCE E MARKS
• 金额: $ 26.61万
• 依托单位: JOHN B. PIERCE LABORATORY, INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-04-21 至 2007-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6888598
• 关键词: behavioral /social science research tag; biomedical automation; clinical research; food flavor; human subject; neural information processing; olfactory stimulus; psychometrics; psychophysiology; sensory mechanism; sensory receptors; sensory signal detection; somesthetic sensory cortex; taste; thiouracil

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Most foods and beverages have 'tastes' (or, more appropriately, 'flavors'), and these result from the integration of neural inputs deriving from several sense modalities: gustation, or taste proper; olfaction; and even somatosensation (touch, temperature, sometimes pungency or irritation). Further, most stimuli that produce perceptions of taste and flavor consist of mixtures of large numbers of individual chemical constituents, and the perception of mixtures depends ultimately on central neural mechanisms that integrate signals arising within and among modalities. The present research focuses on mechanisms underlying the detection, by humans, of taste mixtures (mixtures of gustatory stimuli) and taste-olfactory mixtures (mixtures of gustatory and olfactory stimuli) when stimuli are flowed over the tongue or taken into the mouth. It is likely that at least four neural channels can operate independently in the threshold-level detection of gustatory and olfactory taste/flavor stimuli. Given this, and given that detection reflects discrimination of signal from noise (signal detection theory), a series of experiments will test the predictions of a quantitative model of central integration of statistically independent channels. This model, the integration model, predicts partial summation of signals arising from stimuli that activate independent channels. Tested also are two alternative quantitative models. One of these, a model of complete independence, predicts probability summation, which implies less summation than that predicted by the integration model; the other alternative, stimulus summation, is a model that assumes that stimuli have additive effects within a single channel, and this model typically predicts greater summation than does the integration model. The first set of experiments measures sensitivity to mixtures of gustatory and olfactory stimuli taken in the mouth. The second set of experiments measures sensitivity to mixtures of gustatory stimuli. The third set of experiments asks whether subjects are able to use probability summation to improve the detection of taste-olfaction mixtures. And the fourth set of experiments tests the hypothesis that channel-independence will fail in a paradigm of cross-channel cross modal, gustatory-olfactory) masking, when background maskers are well above threshold.

描述（由申请人提供）：大多数食物和饮料具有“味道”（或者更恰当地，“风味”），并且这些是由源自几种感觉模态的神经输入的整合产生的：味觉或味道本身;嗅觉;以及甚至躯体感觉（触摸、温度，有时是辛辣或刺激）。此外，大多数产生味觉和风味感知的刺激由大量单个化学成分的混合物组成，并且混合物的感知最终取决于整合模态内和模态之间产生的信号的中枢神经机制。本研究的重点是潜在的机制检测，由人类，味觉混合物（味觉刺激的混合物）和味觉-嗅觉混合物（味觉和嗅觉刺激的混合物）时，刺激流到舌头或进入口中。在味觉和嗅觉味觉/风味刺激的阈值水平检测中，可能至少有四个神经通道可以独立地操作。考虑到这一点，并考虑到检测反映了信号与噪声的区分（信号检测理论），一系列实验将测试统计独立通道的中央整合的定量模型的预测。该模型，即整合模型，预测了激活独立通道的刺激所产生的信号的部分总和。还测试了两种替代的定量模型。其中之一，一个完全独立的模型，预测概率求和，这意味着更少的总和比集成模型预测的;另一种替代方案，刺激求和，是一个模型，假设刺激在一个单一的通道内有加性效应，这个模型通常预测更大的总和比集成模型。第一组实验测量对口腔中味觉和嗅觉刺激的混合物的敏感性。第二组实验测量味觉刺激的混合物的敏感性。第三组实验询问受试者是否能够使用概率求和来提高对味道-嗅觉混合物的检测。第四组实验检验了当背景掩蔽者远高于阈值时，通道独立性在跨通道跨通道（味觉-嗅觉）掩蔽范式中失败的假设。