Perception of Flavor Quality: Multisensory and Cognitive Processes

描述（由申请人提供）：当食物或饮料被摄入口中时，所产生的风味感知来自由几种感觉刺激激活的感觉信号：味觉（味觉）、嗅觉（鼻后，当空气传播的颗粒通过口腔后部到达嗅觉受体时）、躯体感觉（质地、温暖、寒冷、辛辣），甚至视觉（颜色）和听觉（咀嚼的声音）。因此，风味感知涉及多感官的相互作用和整合。与此同时，风味感知也受到食物刺激的背景以及人们的知识和期望的强烈影响，即受到更高层次的认知过程的影响。然而，很少有人知道，在风味感知的感觉和认知过程之间的相互作用。区分不同风味加工水平上发生的相互作用至关重要。利用最先进的心理物理学在人类的（行为）方法，本项目测试三个主要假设之间的相互作用的感觉和认知过程中的感知味道混合物：（1）第一系列实验（研究1-3）测试的假设，风味-刺激环境通过一种类似适应的机制改变了对风味混合物的识别和对风味成分的感知强度，这与这些混合物的识别主要取决于组分的相对感知强度的假设一致。(2)第二个系列的实验（研究4-6）测试的假设，即语言环境（标签给予的刺激之前，介绍）影响识别的味道混合物通过操作的通用认知机制整合信息，但没有相应的影响感知的味道强度。(3)的 第三组实验（研究7和8）测试的假设，虽然对比在研究1-6中考察的风味刺激语境的（类似适应）效应和语言语境的同化效应，会损害对风味混合物的准确识别，试用试验反馈可以通过提供关于刺激分布的统计特性和关于标签与风味的关联。反馈可以允许识别性能提高到接近最优水平，如贝叶斯统计所定义的。除了促进我们对风味感知的感官认知机制的理解外，该项目的发现还对食物选择和食物摄入产生了影响。食物和饮料的风味是食物摄入量的重要决定因素，因此在营养和体重调节方面很重要。了解感官和认知过程在识别食品和饮料的风味成分中的相互作用，以及了解反馈在帮助准确识别中的作用，可以证明对开发更好的治疗吞咽，饮食，营养和体重疾病有价值。 公共卫生相关性：使用液体作为风味刺激和行为任务，要求受试者识别风味的主要成分，该研究项目旨在确定来自味觉和嗅觉的感官信息如何与上下文刺激信息，言语信息和反馈信息相互作用，以确定人们如何准确地感知风味质量。一个中心目标是确定反馈是否以及如何提高人们准确识别风味混合物主要成分的能力。风味感知在各种重要的食物相关和健康相关功能中起重要作用，包括吞咽和食物摄入，从而在体重、能量平衡和流体平衡的控制中起重要作用。因此，从目前的研究中出现的发现可能是有价值的，例如，选择健康的饮食，保持健康的体重，并治疗饮食失调的方案。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): When foods or beverages are taken in the mouth, the resulting flavor perceptions emerge from sensory signals activated by stimulation of several senses: taste (gustation), olfaction (retronasally, as air-borne particles reach olfactory receptor through the back of the mouth), somatosensation (texture, warmth, cold, pungency), and even vision (color) and hearing (sounds of mastication). Flavor perception therefore involves multisensory interactions and integration. At the same time, flavor perceptions are also strongly influenced by the context of the food stimuli and by people's knowledge and expectations, that is, by higher-level, cognitive processes. Little is known, however, about the interaction between sensory and cognitive processes in flavor perception. It is critical to distinguish interactions taking place at different levels of flavor processing. Capitalizing on state-of- the-art psychophysical (behavioral) methods in humans, the present project tests three main hypotheses about the interactions between sensory and cognitive processing in the perception of flavor mixtures: (1) The first series of experiments (Studies 1-3) tests the hypothesis that flavor-stimulus context modifies the identification of flavor mixtures and the perceived intensitie of the components of the flavors through an adaptation-like mechanism, consistent with the hypothesis that the identification of these mixtures rests largely on the relative perceived intensities of the components. (2) The second series of experiments (Studies 4-6) tests the hypothesis that linguistic context (labels given to the stimuli before presentation) affects the identification of flavor mixtures through the operation of a general-purpose cognitive mechanism for integrating information, but has no corresponding effect on perceived flavor intensity. (3) The third series of experiments (Studies 7 and 8) tests the hypothesis that although the contrastive (adaptation-like) effects of flavor-stimulus context and the assimilative effects of linguistic context, examined in Studies 1-6, can impair accurate identification of the flavor mixtures, trial-by-trial feedback can benefit subsequent performance by providing information about the statistical properties of the stimulus distributions and about the associations of labels with flavors. Feedback may allow identification performance to improve to near optimal levels, as defined by Bayesian statistics. Besides advancing our understanding of sensory-cognitive mechanisms of flavor perception, the findings of this project bear implications for food selection and food intake. The flavors of foods and beverages are important determinants of food intake, and hence important in the regulation of nutrition and body weight. Understanding the interactions of sensory and cognitive processes in the identification of flavor components of foods and beverages, and understanding the role of feedback in aiding accurate identification, could prove valuable to developing better treatments of disorders involving swallowing, eating, nutrition, and body weight. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Using liquids as flavor stimuli and behavioral tasks that ask subjects to identify the main components of the flavors, this research project aims to determine how sensory information from taste and olfaction interacts with contextual stimulus information, verbal information, and feedback information in order to determine how accurately people can perceive flavor qualities. A central goal is to determine whether and how feedback may enhance people's ability to accurately identify the main components of flavor mixtures. Flavor perception plays an important role in a variety of important food-related and health-related functions, including swallowing and food intake, and thereby plays an important role in the control of body weight, energy balance, and fluid balance. Consequently, the findings that emerge from the present research may be valuable in developing, for example, regimens for selecting healthful diets, for maintaining healthy body weight, and for treating eating disorders.