Flavor perception: Independence of gustatory and olfactory processing
Poster

Amir Ashkenazi
John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine

Lawrence Marks
John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine

     Abstract ID Number: 113
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: March 31, 2003

Abstract
Flavor is a unique percept in that it can be elicited through liquids introduced into the oral cavity that stimulate several modalities, e.g. gustation and olfaction. Previously, we showed that the detectability of a gustatory-olfactory mixture, sucrose plus vanillin, exceeds the detectability of the unmixed components (Ashkenazi & Marks, submitted). The results were compatible with a model hypothesizing summation of outputs from independent noisy channels. To investigate further the processes underlying the detection of these cross-modal mixtures, we investigated whether the presence of one flavorant, sucrose or vanillin, can influence the detectability of the other. To do this, we compared the forced-choice threshold for each test flavorant presented against a background of the other flavorant to the threshold for the test flavorant alone. Background stimulation had little effect on flavorant thresholds. This outcome is consistent with the hypothesis that the flavor channel sums the outputs from independent gustatory and olfactory channels, given the assumptions that most of the noise is intrinsic to the two channels and that gustatory and olfactory channels can be selectively attended.