Taste testing is good for brain?

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

The below seems to say:

Taking small amount of food and appreciating it is good for the brain?

That should, I believe fit into our definition of a CRONer.

Cheers, Al.

http://www.nature.com/nsu/030602/030602-6.html

Wine tasting takes brains

Scans hint connoisseurs respond differently to a tipple.

4 June 2003

HELEN R. PILCHER

Appreciating fine wine takes brains as well as a practised palate and a

florid vocabulary, new research suggests.

In connoisseurs, a quick slurp seems to trigger a cerebral response that is

absent in casual drinkers. It may help them to process and describe their

tipple.

The burst of activity is in the mid frontal cortex, a brain area involved

in language and recognition, find Gisela Hagberg and her colleagues at the

Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome, Italy.

The team monitored the brains of seven wine tasters and seven lucky

volunteers as they sampled three fine Italian wines. All 14 had strong

activity in the parts of the brain that respond to pleasure and taste.

Professional tasters' unusual patterns suggest that " they are trying to

understand what they're drinking, " says Hagberg, who presented the results

at the Italian Wine Academy's 37th meeting in Sienna last week. " Training

does not just educate your palate, it also affects how your brain responds

to the taste of wine. "

" This is fantastic, " says Sturniolo, one of the sommeliers who

participated in the study. He feels that it vindicates the skill of

" breaking down the many tastes of a wine " .

But many of the buffs found the research unsettling. They

had to lie inside a brain scanner and drink the wine through a straw. " They

couldn't see the wine. They didn't know what they were drinking. They

couldn't swirl it around inside their mouth, " says Hagberg. " They didn't

appreciate the process at all. "

" This is an interesting but preliminary study, " cautions Edmund Rolls, who

studies smell and taste at the University of Oxford, UK. Some of these brain

structures are very close together, so it may be difficult to tell exactly

which region is being affected.

Hagberg agrees that the study is just a starting point, saying that her

team plans to use their alcoholic bait to lure more subjects for a bigger

trial.

Alan Pater, Ph.D.; Faculty of Medicine; Memorial University; St. 's, NL

A1B 3V6 Canada; Tel. No.: (709) 777-6488; Fax No.: (709) 777-7010; email:

apater@...