Latest Gustatory system Stories
If you cook, you know. Chop an onion and you risk crying over your cutting board as a burning sensation overwhelms your eyes and nose. Scientists do not know why certain chemical odors, like onion, ammonia and paint thinner, are so highly irritating, but new research in mice has uncovered an unexpected role for specific nasal cavity cells. Researchers funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health, describe...
By William Brand BERKELEY -- Flies love Samuel Adams Winter Lager. That may not seem too surprising -- after all, it's great beer. But for a team of University of California, Berkeley researchers, the news was astounding and has led to a serious scientific breakthrough. It wasn't exactly the beer, it was the carbon dioxide in the beer that drives fruit flies wild. The flies, the Berkeley scientists have discovered, have special taste receptors that are sensitive to carbon dioxide -- the stuff...
By Amy NortonNEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Preschoolers who are sensitive to bitter flavors may be especially likely to turn their noses up at vegetables, a new study shows.In an experiment with 65 preschool children, researchers found that those whose taste buds were particularly attuned to detecting bitterness were less likely to eat their veggies. In some cases, they balked at eating not only bitter vegetables, like broccoli and olives, but also sweeter fare like carrots and red peppers.The...
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Researchers at the University of Michigan have found a "pleasure spot" in the brains of rats that may shed light on how food translates into pleasure for humans. The spot in rats' brains makes sweet tastes more "liked" than other tastes, biopsychology researchers Susana Pecina and Kent Berridge found. The pair detailed their findings in the Dec. 14 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Sweetness by itself is merely a sensation, they note. Its pleasure...
A new study from the Monell Chemical Senses Center may shed light on why some people like salt more than others. The results suggest that a person's liking for salty taste may be related to how much they weighed when they were born. In a paper published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the Monell researchers report that individual differences in salty taste acceptance by two-month old infants are inversely related to birth weight: lighter birth weight infants show greater...
By Megan RauscherNEW YORK -- The holidays are fast approaching. You're stressed, trying to diet and tempting foods abound. It's a recipe for overeating, according to researchers who found that when rats are stressed, deprived of food and then exposed to chocolate -- they overeat."Our findings contribute to the understanding of how feeding behavior is regulated," Dr. M. Flavia Barbano from the Universite Victor Segalen, Bordeaux 2 in France told Reuters Health. "Research in this...
BETHESDA, Md. (August 29, 2005) "“ It's no secret that George Bush the Elder doesn't like broccoli. That he's not alone is no surprise. But the range of foods that many people won't eat because they are sensitive to "bitter" taste, or, in the case of non-sugar sweeteners, an "unacceptable aftertaste," is longer than you might think. These include spinach, lettuce and for some, even citrus fruits and juices. "This is not just an esthetic or parenting issue, but a...
Researchers have found new evidence suggesting that the ability to taste bitter compounds has been strongly advantageous in human evolution. Animals rely on chemical perception, including the senses of taste and smell, for protection against the harmful compounds found in nature. It is widely believed that behavioral and dietary choices may have reduced the importance of such chemical perception in higher primates, and particularly in humans. In new work, researchers including Nicole Soranzo...
COLUMBUS , Ohio "“ The tongue's ability to differentiate between sweet and bitter tastes may reside in the same taste bud cells, a new study reports.The study explains the discovery of a chemical messenger called neuropeptide Y (NPY) in taste bud cells. Though researchers have long known that NPY is active in the brain and gut, this is the first study to show that it is also active in taste bud cells.That finding gives scientists a deeper understanding of how the human brain may distinguish...
