Odor-Induced Saltiness Enhancement: Insights Into The Brain Chronometry Of Flavor Perception

Abstract

Flavor perception results from the integration of at least odor and taste. Evidence for such integration is that odors can have taste properties (odor-induced taste). Most brain areas involved in flavor perception are high-level areas; however, primary gustatory and olfactory areas also show activations in response to a combination of odor and taste. While the regions involved in flavor perception are now quite well identified, the network's organization is not yet understood. Using a close to real salty soup model with electroencephalography brain recording, we evaluated whether odor-induced saltiness enhancement would result in differences of amplitude and/or latency in late cognitive P3 peak mostly and/or in P1 early sensory peak. Three target solutions were created from the same base of green-pea soup: i) with a “usual” salt concentration (PPS2), ii) with “reduced” salt (PPS1: −50%), and iii) with reduced salt and a “beef stock” odor (PPS1B). Sensory data showed that the beef odor produced saltiness enhancement in PPS1B in comparison to PPS1. As the main EEG result, the late cognitive P3 peak was delayed by 25 ms in the odor-added solution PPS1B compared to PPS1. The odor alone did not explain this peak amplitude and higher latency in the P3 peak. These results support the classical view that high-level integratory areas process odor–taste interactions with potential top-down effects on primary sensory regions.