Mechanisms of Taste- & Taste-Olfaction Mixture Detection

描述(申请人提供)：大多数食物和饮料都有“味道”(或者，更确切地说，是“味道”)，这些是几种感官模式的神经输入整合的结果：味觉或适当的味道；嗅觉；甚至躯体感觉(触摸、温度，有时是刺激性或刺激性)。此外，产生味觉和味道知觉的大多数刺激是由大量单个化学成分的混合物组成的，而对混合物的感知最终取决于整合通道内和通道之间产生的信号的中枢神经机制。本研究侧重于当刺激流过舌头或进入口腔时，人类检测到味觉混合(味觉刺激的混合)和味觉-嗅觉混合(味觉和嗅觉刺激的混合)的机制。在味觉和嗅觉味觉/味道刺激的阈值水平检测中，可能至少有四个神经通道独立工作。鉴于这一点，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集成的定量模型的预测。该模型，即积分模型，预测由激活独立通道的刺激产生的信号的部分总和。此外，还测试了两种可供选择的量化模型。其中一个是完全独立的模型，预测概率和，这意味着比整合模型预测的和少；另一个替代方案，刺激总和，是一个假设刺激在单个通道内具有相加效应的模型，该模型通常预测比整合模型更大的总和。第一组实验测量对口腔中混合的味觉和嗅觉刺激的敏感度。第二组实验测量混合味觉刺激的敏感性。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觉混合的检测。第四组实验测试了当背景掩蔽者远高于阈值时，在跨通道跨通道(味觉-嗅觉)掩蔽范式中通道独立性将失败的假设。

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.