Food consumption is by its nature a crossmodal, multisensory experience. The combined inputs from our senses provide the perception of a “flavor”. Altering input from one sensory modality can change the perception from another. Previous research has shown that visual, auditory, olfactory, and somatosensory, as well as gustatory systems contribute to flavor. However, the vast majority of this work concerns adding input to one of the senses, where there is a lack of research into the effect of instead removing passive sensory input from one modality, on the other senses. The study was designed to address the effect of sensory blockade on taste response. Two experiments were performed with this in mind. The first recruited 47 participants rating the sweetness of different solutions when adding or subtracting sensory input. Sucrose, sucrose plus vanilla odor, sucrose plus red color, and sucrose plus both combined were tasted under four conditions: a control, with blindfold, with nose clip, and combined blindfold and nose clip conditions. The results found as expected that adding vanilla odor enhanced the sweetness of the sucrose solution, however a significant inhibitory effect of the nose clips was also plain on sweet taste response. This effect surprisingly did not require a sweet odorant in the sucrose solution; sucrose itself was less sweet without passive olfactory input. No significant effects of visual input were recorded, thus olfaction was focused on in the following test. In the second experiment we investigated olfactory blockade on the other 5 classical senses, to determine if effects observed were limited to links between taste and olfaction, or were more broadly experienced across the senses, and thus could perhaps be attributed to attention or information processing. 45 panelists tested the intensity of sensory stimuli with and without nose clips. Results demonstrated that sweet taste was again impaired by loss of olfactory input, as were umami and bitter (with trends also for sour and salty), chemesthetic stimuli, and of course, detection of aroma. The results of this study suggest a close relationship between olfactory and gustatory input, and that humans may be less able to separate input from the senses, supporting evidence of constant passive crossmodal interaction.

中文翻译：

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消除气味输入揭示了嗅觉输入对于香气以外的食物感知的重要性

食物消费本质上是一种跨模式、多感官的体验。来自我们感官的综合输入提供了“味道”的感知。改变一种感觉方式的输入可以改变另一种感觉方式的感知。先前的研究表明，视觉、听觉、嗅觉、体感以及味觉系统都有助于风味。然而，这项工作的绝大多数涉及向其中一种感官添加输入，而缺乏对从一种模式中删除被动感官输入对另一种感官的影响的研究。该研究旨在解决感官封锁对味觉反应的影响。考虑到这一点，进行了两个实验。第一项招募了 47 名参与者，在增加或减少感官输入时对不同解决方案的甜度进行评分。在四种条件下品尝蔗糖、蔗糖加香草味、蔗糖加红色和蔗糖加两者的组合：对照、带眼罩、带鼻夹以及蒙眼和鼻夹组合条件。结果发现，正如预期的那样，添加香草气味增强了蔗糖溶液的甜味，但鼻夹对甜味反应也有显着的抑制作用。令人惊讶的是，这种效果并不需要蔗糖溶液中添加甜味剂。如果没有被动嗅觉输入，蔗糖本身的甜度较低。没有记录到视觉输入的显着影响，因此在接下来的测试中重点关注嗅觉。在第二个实验中，我们研究了对其他 5 种经典感官的嗅觉封锁，以确定观察到的影响是否仅限于味觉和嗅觉之间的联系，或者是否在各种感官中得到更广泛的体验，因此可能归因于注意力或信息处理。45 名小组成员测试了带鼻夹和不带鼻夹的感觉刺激强度。结果表明，甜味再次因嗅觉输入的丧失而受到损害，鲜味和苦味（酸味和咸味也有趋势）、化学刺激，当然还有香气的检测也受到损害。这项研究的结果表明嗅觉和味觉输入之间存在密切关系，并且人类可能不太能够将输入与感官分开，这支持了持续被动跨模式交互的证据。