Chemical Senses Paper

Chemical Senses

PSY 345

Chemical Senses

In this paper I will be discussing the chemical senses taste and smell, and how they affect each other. I will also discuss the connection between the chemical senses, emotional senses and the brain, and what I could change in my personal senses to make food taste better. Lastly, I will discuss the most memorable meal that I could create, its sensory elements and the connection the meal has with the chemical senses, emotional senses and the brain.

How Taste and Smell Affect Each Other

Taste and smell work together to aid us in fully experiencing what we are eating. What happens when foods enters our mouth is that the food particles stimulate the taste receptors, known as taste buds, on our tongues. Smell, or olfaction, is done through the nose. Taste and smell help us to determine what we should and should not consume. They are thought of as the “gatekeepers” to the body (Goldstein, 2014). One may think that taste and smell might not affect each other but there are certain people that can tell you otherwise. The loss of smell, or anosmia is a disorder that affects many people. It is not really a serious problem, but it does greatly affect ones quality of life because people with anosmia are not able to properly taste food.

Smell

There are sensing cells called olfactory sensory neurons. These neurons are located in the nasal lining and they are responsible for detecting odors and transmitting the information to the brain. When we eat, the odor molecules travel up to the nasal passages by way of the nose and back of the throat. The brain cannot receive these messages if there is swelling, a blockage or if the sensory neurons are damaged (Jobson, 2011).

There are three causes of anosmia these are: swelling or obstruction in the nasal passageways caused by allergies or nasal polyps, damage from exposure to drugs or chemicals that are toxic, or diseases of the nerve pathways such as Alzheimer’s disease, head trauma or surgery (Jobson, 2011).

When anosmia is present the person’s ability to taste and enjoy what they are eating is compromised. Some patients suffer from weight loss or gain because food does not taste like it should or like it did before. It can also be dangerous because the person cannot tell if food is spoiled because they cannot properly taste or smell what is entering their mouth.
The Five Tastes

There are five tastes that we can recognize with the tongue. These are recognized by the different areas on the tongue that are set up to taste different tastes. We taste sweet with the tip of the tongue, bitter with the back, salty on the sides towards the front, sour on the sides towards the back and unami (savory) are randomly placed all over the tongue. Knowing where these taste buds are can actually help you enjoy what you eat. Placing foods or drinks on certain parts of the tongue can also have an effect on how taste is perceived.

What I would Change

If I could change something about my chemical senses I would make my taste buds appreciate and be able to taste healthy foods more sweet or savory. For some, especially those on special diets, it is very hard to stay on the diet because they miss the taste of good foods so they end up cheating on the diet. Most healthy foods that are good for us do not taste the greatest. There are ways however to trick your brain into being satisfied. It has been found that tasting and eating chocolate is associated with an increase in happiness (Meier, Noll, &Molokwu, 2017). It was found that consuming chocolate enhances positive mood. Instead of actually eating the chocolateit is said that just smelling it, in most cases, will satisfy the actual craving for it. The chemical reaction that happens in the brain when we smell, and the fact that chocolate makes us happy, is real and true (Ryan, 2006). If this is the case, I need to invent a new “diet” made of candles. I can make all sorts of candles that smell exactly like the real thing and people can smell instead of eat! It is said that out of the over 10,000 individual smells that a human can detect, they can all be reproduced in a lab. Each odor or smell is made up of a chemical that is being evaporated from the food, called esters. All esters can be remade by scientists in a lab (Ryan, 2006). I might be on to something here!

Memorable Meal

If I had to create one memorable meal it would have to be based on my father’s pizza. My father was from Sicily and he made the best pizza dough and sauce on the eastside of Detroit. He owned several bakeries and pizza places in the Detroit area. The mixture of spicy, savory, and sweet in the sauce made the pizza absolutely mouth- watering, and the dough was light, airy and also had a sweet flavor. There is a major connection between what we taste and smell, how we feel emotionally and physically, and the brain.

Have you ever noticed that when you are not feeling well you might eat something that you usually enjoy and all of a sudden you don’t like it? Sometimes when you eat something when you are ill, it turns you off so much that even when you are better you do not like that food anymore. This is because when we are sick, our taste buds are off, our noses are stuffy and clogged up and we cannot smell and taste properly.

Connection between Chemical, Emotional and Brain

Smells can also trigger memories of the past. Everyone has memories that are tied to odors. In an article regarding the way odors and memories connect the author writes:

“Most of us have had that experience with a smell, but it’s not clear why. Several theories are emerging to explain the phenomenon, however. In olfaction, signals from sensory neurons in the nose are transmitted to the olfactory bulb from where they are relayed to the olfactory cortex, an area of the brain which includes the amygdala. The olfactory cortex then sends signals to the higher cortical areas and the hypothalamus. The limbic projections to the amygdala and hypothalamus are thought to be particularly important to both the emotional and motivational effects of odor, but all we know for sure is that there is a general association” (Larkin, 1999).

Based on information from the article I have come to realize that this is why my father’s pizza holds such a strong memory for me. When I just think about this pizza I can almost taste it. The memorable pizza also has emotional ties to me. My father has passed away and that makes the memory of eating the pizza that much stronger and pleasant. Thinking of his pizza reminds me of my childhood and laughing with him while eating the pizza. I do not think that that taste and that memory can ever be duplicated. There has never been, and probably never will be another pizza like my dad’s.

There is another interesting way that chemical senses, emotional senses and the brain have a connection. This is one that not many people may realize. Odor is processed differently than all of the other senses because the other senses are routed through the brain by way of the thalamus. The thalamus is also known as a “gatekeeper”, processing information from the sensory neurons to the brain. Smell, on the other hand, totally skips the thalamus and goes directly to the primary olfactory cortex. This means that smells actually enter our brain without us even knowing. Smells can reach our brains, and attach memories without us even processing it. In fact, smell is the only sense that is still active even while one is sleeping or even in a coma (Beeler, 2014).

Another reason that there is such an emotional connection with the chemical senses is because sometimes when these scents or tastes are labeled in the brain they are not labeled specifically what they are. For example, with my Dads pizza. I do not recall the smells and tastes as specific things such as “tomatoes”, “oregano”, and “garlic”, they are just simply labeled in my brain as “my dad’s sauce”, or “my dad’s pizza dough”. Instead of labeling it as it really is, we label it according to the context that we are in at the time. The reason for this is that we generally do not analyze odor and taste in the same way as the other senses. We analyze and label it with emotion (Beeler, 2014)

So as you can see, there is a major connection between taste and smell, also with the chemical and emotional senses. It is just another aspect of the miraculous human body that we do not ever think about. All this talking about food has made me very hungry, I sure wish I had a “Dad’s Pizza” smelling candle to light, while I sit here and eat my bland low carb diet dinner.

References

Beeler, C. (2014) Why smell is so closely connected to our memories and emotions. [Video file]

Retrieved from: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/the-pulse/76330-why-smell-is-so-closely-connected-to-our-memories-and-emotions-

Jobson (2011) Anosmia. U.S. Pharmacist Patient Teaching Aide. Jobson Medical Information

Retrieved from: https://www.uspharmacist.com/CMSDocuments/2011/1/PTA1101_Anosmia.pdf

Larkin, M. (1999) Sniffing out memories of holidays past. The Lancet. Volume 354.

Retrieved from: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.contentproxy.phoenix.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=4a6d7e27-0cf3-4c06-b86d-5e2005f73d45%40sessionmgr101&vid=1&hid=102

Ryan, D. (2006). How to make all the foods you eat taste better. Website article. Retrieved from:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/drryan32.htm

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