The Multisensory Mouth: An investigation into the somatosensory, olfactory and gustatory processes driving oral behaviours

进行的研究将集中在更全面的理解和表征的感官，知觉，行为和情感（喜欢/不喜欢）的机制在口腔多感官处理。这将涉及“自下而上”和“自上而下”的方法。前者将研究多感觉口腔系统的功能和相互作用（触觉，温度，疼痛，味觉，化学感觉，嗅觉）参与口腔行为，后者与解释和影响这些多感官过程的感知，认知和情感系统，在这里我们期望视觉和听觉有助于，例如，味觉（参见这些论文，以获得口腔感觉如何与视觉和听觉融合的更多示例- Levitan等人，2008; Morot等人，2001; North & Hargeaves，2008; Oberfeld等人，2009; Parr et al，2003;.Rozin，1982）Research.Research questions：1.多感觉整合在超级感觉者/品尝者和非感觉者/品尝者之间有区别吗？2.味觉状态（一种遗传多态性）对多感觉加工有什么影响？3.跨通道知觉的规则，如超加性、感觉优势、腹语等，是否能影响复杂的口腔感觉知觉，如干燥、干燥？4.个体对口腔刺激的反应差异在多大程度上反映了语境（自上而下）与周边（自下而上）的感觉加工？研究方法：1.心理物理学和定量感觉测试2。多感官知觉的内隐行为测量3.遗传多态性和群体细分4.情绪的隐蔽措施-心理生理学-肌电图，皮肤电导，心率5。神经影像学- fMRIScope：本论文将研究多感官相互作用如何驱动口腔感官知觉。口腔护理产品对这些过程的影响将从跨模态的角度进行研究，以及更多的认知操作的影响。

The research to be undertaken will focus on a fuller understanding and characterisation of the sensory, perceptual, behavioural and emotional (like/dislike) mechanisms engaged during oral multisensory processing. This will involve both 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' approaches. The former will study the function and interactions of multisensory oral systems (touch, temperature, pain, taste, chemosensory, olfactory) engaged in oral behaviours, and the latter with the perceptual, cognitive and emotional systems that interpret and influence these multisensory processes, and here we expect vision and hearing to contribute to, for example, flavour perception (see these papers for more examples of how the oral senses merge with vision and hearing - Levitan et al, 2008; Morot et al, 2001; North & Hargeaves, 2008; Oberfeld et al, 2009; Parr et al, 2003;.Rozin, 1982)Research.Research questions:1. Does multisensory integration differ between superfeelers/tasters and non -feelers/tasters?2. What is the impact of Taster Status (a genetic polymorphism) on multisensory processing?3. Can the rules of cross-modal perception such as superadditivity, sensory dominance, ventriloquism etc inform on complex oro-sensory percepts such as dryness, mouthfeel?4. To what extent do individual differences in responses to oral stimuli reflect contextual (top-down) versus peripheral (bottom-up) sensory processing?Research methods:1. Psychophysics and quantitative sensory testing2. Implicit behavioural measures of multisensory perception3. Genetic polymorphisms and population segmentation4. Covert measures of emotion - psychophysiology - EMG, skin conductance, heart rate5. Neuroimaging - fMRIScope: The thesis will examine how multisensory interactions drive oro-sensory perception. The effects of oral care products on these processes will be studied from a cross-modal perspective, as well as the influence of more cognitive manipulations.