The harmony between taste and odor at meals (Neuroscience of the flavor)

Abstract

When eating foods, we drive many sensations to acquire information of them. The resultant sensation has evolved to distinguish what kinds of foods, and to judge whether those are able to ingest or not. But in human, the role of this sensation has changed to feel palatability of foods. The basic information for foods palatability, “the flavor”, is the integrative sense that is formed from not only taste but also odors and mouthfeels. In particular, the cross-modal interaction between the gustation and the olfaction is important to form flavor. However, little is known about how and where in the brain flavor is formed. In this review, I describe the important role in the formation of flavor, the mechanism for signal perception and processing, and the neural pathway, of each chemical sense. Finally, I introduce our research which is aimed at revealing the role of the insular cortex in forming flavor, and discuss the flavor as a sense at eating.