A fascinating visual during a discussion on protein engineering, beckoning more mysteries and questions…

15 responses to “The Neuronal Architecture of Taste”

  1. It reminds me of the map of the human auditory pathway by Lloyd Watts
    Lloyd Watts Human Auditory PAthway
    When I first saw this at PARC, I was blown away, and I introduced Lloyd to Ray Kurzweil, who incorporated the diagram into his subsequent book.

    One cool detail: the stereoscopic sense of place that we can hear when blindfolded comes from a low-level neuronal filter on the differential timing of the same acoustic signal arriving at each ear. It’s a slight difference, arising from the speed of sound, requiring a low-level cortical circuit to process in time.

  2. Nice paper. Some biomimetics could easily make stuff better, e.g. "However, as emphasized in [1],
    conventional modern speech recognizers do not include an auditory scene
    analysis engine to separate sounds in a mixture into their constituent sources
    prior to recognition. Instead, a conventional speech recognizer performs the
    front-end (Fast Fourier Transform and cepstrum) and projects them
    immediately to the back-end, which can only work well when the input
    signal is already isolated speech. The lack of an auditory scene analysis
    engine is the primary reason that modern speech recognizers exhibit poor
    noise robustness relative to human listeners, especially when the background
    noise consists of competing speech."

  3. Everything is fine, if it helps stop NSA…

  4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5-YeSZwFRE

    The electronic tongue and nose are out there as well of course. What the heck is "Umani" as a taste…..ahh hahh, that wonderful taste of MSG. pronounced "oo-mommy"
    http://www.msginfo.com/about_taste_umami.asp

  5. Thank you! Awesomely awesome.
    We don’t put needles on the tongue, but we do put them on the ear to cure illness.
    baike.baidu.com/picview/26752/26752/0/f7657560c34ae200ebf…

  6. where does a DOMINO’s PIZZA fit in????

  7. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/63152855@N03]
    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/jgury/10860889574/]

  8. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/63152855@N03]
    Only with advanced neuronal engineering can any pizza achieve such a high degree of statistical confidence.

  9. Oh that’s funny. Remember those Trident ads: "four out of five dentists recommended sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum"…

    What’s up with those one out of five doctors who recommend Bubble Yum? Maybe because it’s good for business?

  10. I worked in a company that had an approval cycle that sort of looked like that chart …. sort of like the new health care regime we are facing…..

  11. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigduke6] No, not sweet in the case of classic cheese, peperoni, sausage pizza. I think I have the entry pointer going to roughly the correct perceptual entry point between salty and umani (oh mommy, as a ripe tomato sauce / msg flavor) which does get some sweet perception if you follow the map. However, in the cases of BBQ chicken or any Hawaiian, Asian plum sauces etc. it is not so simple as a single perceptual entry point.

  12. so you are saying that before that Stuffed Crust Dominois PIZZA goes down my gullet there are millions of variable processes that are sampled and processed then shot to my brain to tell if there is enough salt and provolone in said pizza? YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I chew and swallow too fast

  13. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/63152855@N03] Try some Mexican fully sugared Coke with it.
    I can’t recommend any wines because none of the magazine tasting characteristics seem evident in this chart. E.g "Shows the classic structure and balance of a fine Napa Cabernet, in the interplay of rich, ripe tannins, acidity and fruit. That makes this 100% Zinfandel elegant. It’s also delicious, with wild berry, plum, cola, chocolate and peppery spice flavors."

  14. If you were going further to illustrate / animate one of these maps it would be something like lighting up a pinball machine as the food gets popped in for this case. Then sound and color could go along with that for whatever "sweet" "bitter" etc. is to get the extra dimensional awareness going. The fact that it has this much complexity is so interesting.

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