Taste-odour interactions in sweet taste perception

The sense of smell plays a major role in food flavour perception: Individuals who loose their sense of smell often report that food has no taste anymore. Yet, from a neuroanatomical point of view taste and smell are very different senses. Taste is perceived primarily on the tongue whereas odours are perceived in the upper part of the nasal cavity either directly or via the back of the mouth. But does this neuroanatomical dissociation imply that taste and odour perception are independent? Probably not! Indeed, information coming from the gustatory and the olfactory systems are likely to be combined at a higher level of processing in the brain to give rise to a unique perception referred to as ”flavour” (1), (28). The question thus is: What is the nature of this combination? Is it an additive combination whereby taste and odour perception are simply added to form an overall perception or can we observe interactions between taste and odours? In this context, taste odour interaction refers to a modification in perceived taste intensity in the presence of an odour. For example, a sweet solution will taste sweeter in the presence of a vanilla aroma even though the vanilla aroma possesses no taste properties. The aim of this chapter is to examine whether such interactions exist for sweet taste perception. We begin with an overview of the literature on the effect of odour