Smelling Memories and Emotions
03 Apr 2009 11:23 by majo
Since classical antiquity, studies of human perception have noted five external senses through which the mind receives information about the world: vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste. The foundational texts of Western philosophy consistently rank these senses in a hierarchy of importance. Vision comes first because it is the sense considered to have the greatest significance for the development of knowledge. Though it is followed closely in the hierarchy by hearing.
The remaining three senses, smell, taste and touch are treated more briefly, and the order of their importance varies according to which aspect of the sense is stressed.
- Making Sense of Taste: Food & Philosophy By Carolyn Korsmeyer
Smak og behag kan ikke diskuteres - og det er heller ikke mye vits i å krangle om det, viser ny forskning. Genetiske forskjeller gjør at omtrent ingen mennesker i hele verden har lik lukt- og smakssans.
Apparently test by Israeli scientists have shown a difference in active sensor cells between different ethnic groups. In addition if you consider cultural, individual taste and smell, it all points towards the claim that what is good or bad taste cannot be concluded.
Another example of relative taste is when you for instance you go to a Indian restaurant here in Norway and they ask you if you want it "Indian hot" or "Norwegian hot". I guess some customers found out the hard way that their perception of hot is what others consider mild.
Noen liker saueskaller, andre liker sjøpølser. Både natur, kultur, geografi og mammas spisevaner er med på å bestemme hva som blir din favorittmat. Kanskje ikke så rart at smaken er forskjellig?
How does smell and taste affect eachother
09 Mar 2009 14:15 by majo
Ok I`ve decided to work and explore how the two senses smell and taste are connected. I think my main focus will be to see how smell affects taste, as I have come to understand, it matters a lot.
I think most people have some experience with how smell affects taste. When you have the flu and your nose is stuffed-up, you can hardly taste anything.
Seventy to seventy-five percent of what we perceive as taste actually comes from our sense of smell. Taste buds allow us to perceive only bitter, salty, sweet, and sour flavors. It’s the odor molecules from food that give us most of our taste sensation.
Take away smell and you take away taste. It would be interesting to see if it is possible to achieve the opposite reaction. Is it possible to enhance taste with smell? How? Is it possible to camouflage taste with smell? Can you make food which does not taste good into something delicious with smell?
A simple test to try for yourself how the two senses are related.
Lifescience.com has published a few interesting articles on taste and smell.
The Suprising Impact of Taste and Smell is an article by Maggie Koerth-Baker about how these two senses are connected to metabolism, memory and how we eat based on taste.
Aromas can affect the taste not only through the nose, but also by wafting up the back of the throat during swallowing. Different compounds can interact with each other in a way that enhances or suppresses their aroma.
Senses are the physiological methods of perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology (or cognitive science), and philosophy of perception. The nervous system has a specific sensory system, or organ, dedicated to each sense.
I`ve decided to work with taste and smell in my selective course called Design for all senses. Why? The main senses I`ve worked with before have been sight, hearing and touch. I want to explore something (entierly) new. Since we are bombarded with visual impressions daily, learning about the so called lower senses will broaden the horizon. It might even be smart to design with smell and taste as the society already is overwhelmed with sight and hearing impressions ex. from commercials.
The foundational texts of Western philosophy consistently rank these senses in a hierarchy of importance. Vision comes first because it is the sense considered to have the greatest significance for the devenlopment of knowledge. Though it is followed closely in the hierarcy by hearing.
The remaining three senses, smell, taste and touch are treated more briefly, and the order of their importance varies accoring to which aspect of the sense is stressed.
- Making Sense of Taste: Food & Philosophy by Carolyn Korsmeyer
Taste and smell are some of the senses which are rarely considered when designing products and services. I might go a little bit into haptics, as it also plays a part when eating. The tactility of food.
in modern (though not ancient) science, smell is linked with taste as one of the chemical senses, and indeed it is viritually impossible to conceive of a full-fledged taste sensation that does not have a olafactory components
- Making Sense of Taste
Interesting ascpects of my choosen senses is as Carolyn Korsmeyer writes:
Pleasure and pain are intimately sometimes inescapably, connected with the sensations delivered by taste, smell and touch, making these senses a cause for consern because of the seductive diversions they represent.
Taste requiers pherhaps the most intimate congress with the object of perception, which must enter the mouth, and which delivers sensations experienced in the mouth and throat on its way down and through the digestive track.
One of the most significant roles of food is social; eating is part of the rituals, cermonies, and practices that knit together communities
That taste (and smell) is intimate might be a weakness but also a strenght. As opposed to sight and hearing, smell and taste might not be that suited for distrubution over large areas for many people. Key here is pherhaps quality over quantity.
That last part might be something to keep in mind if new technology makes it possible to exchange taste or smell over the internet. We already have social networks on the net based on the two higher senses (sight and hearing). What about a net community based on food experiences?
Taste
Taste or gustation is one of the two main "chemical" senses. There are at least four types of tastes[4] that "buds" (receptors) on the tongue detect, and hence there are anatomists who argue[citation needed] that these constitute five or more different senses, given that each receptor conveys information to a slightly different region of the brain[citation needed]. The inability to taste is called ageusia.
The four well-known receptors detect sweet, salt, sour, and bitter, although the receptors for sweet and bitter have not been conclusively identified. A fifth receptor, for a sensation called umami, was first theorised in 1908 and its existence confirmed in 2000[5]. The umami receptor detects the amino acid glutamate, a flavour commonly found in meat and in artificial flavourings such as monosodium glutamate.
The 5 basic tastes
Sourness
Mostly appear in fruits. Lemon, lime, grape, orange, and sometimes the melon.
Sourness is the taste that detects acidity. The mechanism for detecting sour taste is similar to that which detects salt taste. Hydrogen ion channels detect the concentration of hydronium ions (H3O+ ions) that are formed from acids and water.
Sugar cane, sugar beet, some fruits, honey, sorghum, sugar maple
Sweetness, usually regarded as a pleasurable sensation, is produced by the presence of sugars, some proteins and a few other substances. Sweetness is often connected to aldehydes and ketones, which contain a carbonyl group.
Beef, lamb, parmesan, roquefort cheese, soy sauce and fish sauce.
Umami is the name for the taste sensation produced by compounds such as glutamate, and are commonly found in fermented and aged foods. In English, it is also described as "meatiness", "relish" or "savoriness". The Japanese word comes from umai for yummy, keen, or nice. Umami is considered a fundamental taste in Chinese and Japanese cooking, but is not discussed as much in Western cuisine.
The bitter taste is perceived by many to be unpleasant, sharp, or disagreeable. Common bitter foods and beverages include coffee, unsweetened chocolate, bitter melon, beer, bitters, olives, citrus peel, many plants in the Brassicaceae family, dandelion greens and escarole. Quinine is also known for its bitter taste and is found in tonic water.
Saltiness
Saltiness is a taste produced primarily by the presence of sodium ions. Other ions of the alkali metals group also taste salty.
Other
Fattiness
Calcium
Other other: Dryness, Metallicness, Prickliness/hotness, Coolness, Numbness, Heartiness (Kokumi) and Temperature
I think this sense is interesting because it is intangible. When you taste something, you physically touch something, but with smell you don`t. I`m thinking smell is a great sense to work with when planning suprises. You don`t know it is there. Before it is too late maybe?
Smell or olfaction is the other "chemical" sense. Unlike taste, there are hundreds of olfactory receptors, each binding to a particular molecular feature. Odour molecules possess a variety of features and thus excite specific receptors more or less strongly. This combination of excitatory signals from different receptors makes up what we perceive as the molecule's smell.
In the brain, olfaction is processed by the olfactory system. Olfactory receptor neurons in the nose differ from most other neurons in that they die and regenerate on a regular basis. The inability to smell is called anosmia. Some neurons in the nose are specialized to detect pheromones.
(ol-fac-tom-e-ter) n 1: a portable odor detecting and measuring device; 2: a nasal organoleptic instrument; 3: instrument for measuring ambient odor dilution-to-threshhold, D/T; 4: a scentometer (slang); 5: “Odor Scope”
Flavour Taste is not the same as flavour ,it includes the smell of a food as well as its taste.
Flavor or flavour is the sensory impression of a food or other substance, and is determined mainly by the chemical senses of taste and smell. The "trigeminal senses", which detect chemical irritants in the mouth and throat, may also occasionally determine flavor. The flavor of the food, as such, can be altered with natural or artificial flavorants, which affect these senses.
Flavorant is defined as a substance that gives another substance flavor, altering the characteristics of the solute, causing it to become sweet, sour, tangy, etc.
Of the three chemical senses, smell is the main determinant of a food item's flavor. While the taste of food is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and savory (umami) – the basic tastes – the smells of a food are potentially limitless. A food's flavor, therefore, can be easily altered by changing its smell while keeping its taste similar. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in artificially flavored jellies, soft drinks and candies, which, while made of bases with a similar taste, have dramatically different flavors due to the use of different scents or fragrances. The flavorings of commercially produced food products are typically created by flavorists.
Taste
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