Sensory Experience Research Articles

Application of electroencephalogram (EEG) in the study of the influence of different contents of alcohol and Baijiu on brain perception

Alcoholic beverages flavour is complex and unique with different alcohol content, and the application of flavour perception could improve the objectivity of flavour evaluation. This study utilized electroencephalogram (EEG) to assess brain reactions to alcohol percentages (5 %–53 %) and Baijiu's complex flavours. The findings demonstrate the brain's proficiency in discerning between alcohol concentrations, evidenced by increasing physiological signal strength in tandem with alcohol content. When contrasted with alcohol solutions of equivalent concentrations, Baijiu prompts a more significant activation of brain signals, underscoring EEG's capability to detect subtleties due to flavour complexity. Additionally, the study reveals notable correlations, with δ and α wave intensities escalating in response to alcohol stimulation, coupled with substantial activation in the frontal, parietal, and right temporal regions. These insights verify the efficacy of EEG in charting the brain's engagement with alcoholic flavours, setting the stage for more detailed exploration into the neural encoding of these sensory experiences.

Recall of Flavor at First E-cigarette Use and Its Association with E-cigarette Progression: The Mediating Effects of First Sensory Experience

To test whether the association between flavor at first vape and continued use is mediated through subjective experience at first vape. In a 2020 cross-sectional survey, 955 young adult ever-vapers recalled their first flavor vaped, subjective experiences at first use, current vaping behavior, nicotine dependence, and quit attempts. A latent class model grouped first-use subjective experiences into classes. Two-part negative binomial hurdle models for each vaping behavior evaluated whether the association of first flavor used with vaping outcomes was mediated by positive experience. Four latent classes (positive, positive and negative, negative, and minimal experience) were further reduced to "any positive experience" (only positive, positive and negative) vs "no positive experience" (negative or minimal). Class membership mediated the association of first flavor used (mint/menthol/ice [ie, "cooling"] or sweet vs other) with each vaping outcome. For example, cooling flavor (vs. other) was associated with positive class membership (OR=3.5; 95% CI: 1.5, 8.1), which was then associated with any past 30-day vaping (OR=3.9; 95% CI: 2.7, 5.8) and greater number of vaping days among current vapers (RR=1.9; 95% CI: 1.3, 2.7) in the two-part hurdle model. Similar results were observed for nicotine dependence and quit attempts, and for sweet (vs other) flavor for any dependence or quit attempts, but not number of dependence symptoms or quit attempts. Use of a cooling or sweet flavor at first use was associated with having a positive first vaping sensory experience, and then greater likelihood as a young adult of reporting past 30-day vaping, more vaping days, and greater risk for nicotine dependence, suggesting a key mediating role of first use experience.

Hedonic consumption of virtual rides entertainment service: a multi-method perspective: SEM and fsQCA

PurposePrior studies have put much emphasis on using the uses and gratification (U&G) theory to find out why people use games, social media, the Internet, e-shopping, etc. Despite past research efforts, the root causes underlying this phenomenon still need to be discovered as to why people use interactive virtual rides (vrides) entertainment services, especially when incorporating the hedonic consumption perspective (i.e. playful-consumption experiences). Considering the knowledge gap in the vrides’ context, this study aims to use the UGT to find out why people use the vrides entertainment service from a hedonic consumption point of view.Design/methodology/approachWith 217 usable responses, the research model was tested using partial least squares-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).FindingsFindings reveal that only perceived enjoyment, arousal and sensory experience derive continuous intention behavior to consume vride entertainment service. Findings using the fsQCA revealed multiple causal configurations for the proposed outcome.Originality/valueThis study contributes to extending the assumption of UGT via incorporating the hedonic consumption perspective to explore the potential motives and intention to consume vrides entertainment services. Our study also discusses the important theoretical/practical implications of our findings. Besides, this study is unique because it shows both symmetrical and asymmetrical connections that help us understand why people keep using vrides entertainment service.

Touch in digitalized worlds: An introduction

AbstractThe English word digital (from the Latin, digitus) etymologically connects both fingers and technologies. In this special issue, we honor this dual meaning of the digital by foregrounding how living in a digital era both challenges and actualizes our senses, particularly our sense of touch. Ethnographically, the articles gathered offer intimate accounts of tactile experiences that intertwine with the digital in both direct and indirect ways. Despite ongoing—and often legitimate—anxieties about the disappearance of touch from our increasingly digitized world, our special issue shows that human engagements with digital technologies are more complex. We theorize touch through a phenomenological and relational lens and as a sensory experience that is deeply shaped and reconfigured by local, sociotechnical and political‐economic concerns. This special issue illuminates how attention to hands, fingers, or touch can help us understand the relationship between bodies, ethical life, social relations, selves, and subjectivities through a new lens.

Conceptualizing Mindfulness Using Construal Level Theory: A Two-Dimensional Model

Construal Level Theory (CLT) is a well-established, comprehensive framework that provides an account of the relationship between construal level and psychological distance, and the effects they have on cognitive processing and a wide range of phenomena. In this article we present a conceptualization of mindfulness based on the theoretical foundations of CLT. In light of mindfulness definitions and current research, it is difficult to determine whether mindfulness entails low psychological distance and concrete, non-conceptual representations of experience, or high psychological distance and abstract representations. We argue that mindfulness uniquely combines both. The two-dimensional model we present posits that mindfulness is characterized by a simultaneous decreased psychological distance from external sensory experiences and increased psychological distance from internal mental experiences. We highlight the uniqueness of this quality of mindfulness, and demonstrate how the formulation presented here not only aligns well with but also integrates research on mindfulness as a state of consciousness as well as a personality disposition. We further argue that this combination underlies the beneficial effects of mindfulness and delineate how it enables individuals to leverage the advantages and mitigate the drawbacks associated with both high and low levels of construal and psychological distance. The proposed two-dimensional model resolves contradictions in the literature, aiming to deepen our understanding of mindfulness, its benefits, and core mechanisms.

Hebbian instruction of axonal connectivity by endogenous correlated spontaneous activity.

Spontaneous activity refines neural connectivity prior to the onset of sensory experience, but it remains unclear how such activity instructs axonal connectivity with subcellular precision. We simultaneously measured spontaneous retinal waves and the activity of individual retinocollicular axons and tracked morphological changes in axonal arbors across hours in vivo in neonatal mice. We demonstrate that the correlation of an axon branch's activity with neighboring axons or postsynaptic neurons predicts whether the branch will be added, stabilized, or eliminated. Desynchronizing individual axons from their local networks, changing the pattern of correlated activity, or blocking N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors all significantly altered single-axon morphology. These observations provide the first direct evidence in vivo that endogenous patterns of correlated neuronal activity instruct fine-scale refinement of axonal processes.

Between gaze and taste: Senses, imaginaries, and the sustainability of culinary heritage in Greek tourist-oriented tavernes

This article examines food tourism events in permanent tourist-oriented food venues, focusing on Greek tavernes. Drawing on ethnographic research in Greece since 2010, we explore how tourists' expectations and sensory experiences in food events influence culinary heritage and social sustainability. We employ Urry's “tourist gaze” concept, integrating it with a comprehensive analytical framework addressing tourists' and local attendees' sensory experiences in daily food events at culturally significant institutions like Greek Tavernes. Our study illuminates the dominance of tourists' expectations, preconceived imaginaries, and sensory engagements, revealing potential challenges to sustained cultural traditions and culinary heritage. While the “tourist gaze” may perpetuate static cultural dynamics, we identify “tourist (and resident) taste” as a counter-mechanism. Our findings reveal that Greek tavernes, catering to tourist expectations and evolving local taste preferences, strike a delicate balance, enhancing eventful and multisensorial experiences to preserve and develop culinary heritage and social sustainability.

Analysis of Children's Conceptions of Concepts at the End of Pre-Primary Education

The study presents the results of the authors' original research. The subject of the research were authentic utterances of 5-6-year-old children at the exit from compulsory pre-primary education. They represented individual conceptions of the following concepts: interview, question, poem, fairytale, book, magazine, library, letter, reading, writing, writer. The concepts were selected from the state curriculum (2016). The aim of the study was to present selected findings from research on children's conceptions of language and literary concepts. In the study, we provided answers to the research question. Which claims from psycholinguistic theories about narrower and broader conceptions of concepts are most valid in children's authentic utterances? The research strategy was quantitative. Children's authentic utterances were obtained through individual interviews. Each child answered four basic questions: what is it? What is it for? What would it be if it wasn't? How do you know that? The children's statements were content-analyzed and interpreted. The children in the research sample were dominated by narrower conceptions of linguistic and literary concepts (61%). The narrower conceptions of the concepts contained a pre-scientific concept of knowing their meaning. The content of their utterances predominantly distorted the objective meanings of the concepts. Children were less likely to interpret social interactions and least likely to use explanations of another, familiar concept. When they did explain concepts in broader terms (34%), they mainly relied on sensory experiences. Some children did not know or did not answer the questions (5%). The conducted research is a part of the VEGA 1/0505/24 project - Children's preconceptions about the phenomena of reading literacy.

Emotion and Conversion on the Early Modern Spanish Stage

ABSTRACT Historians of the religious culture of early modern Spain have long paid attention to the emotional and sensual valences of their subject. Yet it is only recently that Hispanists have begun to fully exploit the systematic theoretical approaches offered by historians of emotion and the senses. This article examines two literary representations of conversion—one successful and one failed—in order to demonstrate how close attention to seventeenth-century concepts of emotion and sense can help us better understand the social dynamics of conversion and religious experience in the period. Both Lope de Vega’s Bautismo del príncipe de Marruecos and Calderón de la Barca’s Nuevo palacio del Retiro explicitly link conversion to the body’s sensory and emotional capabilities. Though they take quite different approaches, both suggest that physical revelation must precede intellectual enlightenment. Faith was, in their presentations, a matter of the eyes, ears, and heart. The author argues that future scholarship on the religious cultures of early modern Spain must take account of the ways in which contemporary authors paid so much attention to emotion and sensory experience in their depictions of conversion and of religious experience more generally.

PungentDB: Bridging traditional Chinese medicine of medicine food homology and modern food flavor chemistry

Merging traditional Chinese medicine's (TCM) principles of medicine-food homology with modern flavor chemistry, this research unveils PungentDB (http://www.pungentdb.org.cn/home), a database documenting 205 unique pungent flavor compounds from 231 TCMs. It provides detailed insights into their chemical attributes, biological targets (including IC50/EC50 values), and molecular structures (2D/3D), enriched with visualizations of target organ distribution and protein structures, exploring the pungent flavor space with the help of a feature-rich visual interface. This collection, derived from over 3249 sources and highlighting 9129 targets, delves into the compounds' unique pungent flavors—taste, aroma, and thermal sensations—and their interaction with taste and olfactory receptors. PungentDB bridges ancient wisdom and culinary innovation, offering a nuanced exploration of pungent flavors' role in enhancing food quality, safety, and sensory experiences. This initiative propels flavor chemistry forward, serving as a pivotal resource for food science advancement and the innovative application of pungent flavors.

Time Makes Space: Emergence of Place Fields in Networks Encoding Temporally Continuous Sensory Experiences.

The vertebrate hippocampus is believed to use recurrent connectivity in area CA3 to support episodic memory recall from partial cues. This brain area also contains place cells, whose location-selective firing fields implement maps supporting spatial memory. Here we show that place cells emerge in networks trained to remember temporally continuous sensory episodes. We model CA3 as a recurrent autoencoder that recalls and reconstructs sensory experiences from noisy and partially occluded observations by agents traversing simulated arenas. The agents move in realistic trajectories modeled from rodents and environments are modeled as continuously varying, high-dimensional, sensory experience maps (spatially smoothed Gaussian random fields). Training our autoencoder to accurately pattern-complete and reconstruct sensory experiences with a constraint on total activity causes spatially localized firing fields, i.e., place cells, to emerge in the encoding layer. The emergent place fields reproduce key aspects of hippocampal phenomenology: a) remapping (maintenance of and reversion to distinct learned maps in different environments), implemented via repositioning of experience manifolds in the network's hidden layer, b) orthogonality of spatial representations in different arenas, c) robust place field emergence in differently shaped rooms, with single units showing multiple place fields in large or complex spaces, and d) slow representational drift of place fields. We argue that these results arise because continuous traversal of space makes sensory experience temporally continuous. We make testable predictions: a) rapidly changing sensory context will disrupt place fields, b) place fields will form even if recurrent connections are blocked, but reversion to previously learned representations upon remapping will be abolished, c) the dimension of temporally smooth experience sets the dimensionality of place fields, including during virtual navigation of abstract spaces.

Capturing oral forms of linguistic landscape in the public teaching space

Abstract In sociolinguistics, the concept of linguistic soundscaping is developed to document the formation of social spaces over time as influenced by linguistic actions. Using a multimodal perspective, this enquiry looks into the dynamic and interactive nature of the typical linguistic soundscape, situating the issue in a public teaching-and-learning space at a university in China. The study adopts a method of linguistic sound walks, to capture real-time sensory encounters with the linguistic soundscape and to understand how these auditory elements influence students’ perceptions of their environment. The study focuses on two main perspectives: the objective characterisation of the linguistic soundscape within university public spaces, and the subjective perceptions of students experiencing these soundscapes. The first perspective involves systematically documenting and categorising the types of sound present, providing a comprehensive overview of the auditory environment. The second perspective explores how students interpret and react to these soundscapes, revealing insights into their sensory experiences and evaluations of their learning environment. These perspectives are combined to demonstrate the importance of the auditory dimension in shaping educational experiences and social interactions within university settings. The findings highlight the diversity and complexity of the linguistic soundscape, emphasising its role in fostering a sense of community and influencing students’ emotional and cognitive responses to their surroundings. This study contributes original insights into the multimodal nature of linguistic landscapes and underscores the value of auditory elements in understanding social spaces in educational contexts.

Acute Affective Responses to Virtual Reality Exercise: A Crossover Randomized Clinical Trial.

Virtual reality (VR) exercise aims to offer positive affective and sensory experiences through an immersive experience rich in audiovisual stimuli. Notwithstanding, there is a paucity of large sample size studies comparing the acute effects of VR exercise compared with a matched exercise performed in a non-VR environment. The study compared the acute effects of a VR exercise session versus a matched non-VR exercise session in effect, pleasure, enjoyment, perceived exertion, and heart rate. This is a crossover randomized clinical trial. The time, difficulty, and exercise type of the non-VR exercise were matched to VR exercise. Before and immediately after each session, participants responded to the Borg's Perceived Exertion Scale, the Feeling Scale and the Felt Arousal Scale, and the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale. The analyses were conducted with Generalized Linear Models, Wilcoxon's, and T-test for paired samples. A total of 83 adults (40 females) aged 35.46 years were included in the study. Participants in the VR condition had a greater increase in affect (mean change difference = 0.95, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.83-1.06, P < 0.001), arousal (mean change difference = 0.37, 95% CI = 0.23-9.50, P < 0.001). The pleasure and enjoyment median after the VR session were higher. In conclusion, the immersive VR exercise was more strenuous, but resulted in a better affective response, greater pleasure, and enjoyment.

Dynamic medial parietal and hippocampal deactivations under DMT relate to sympathetic output and altered sense of time, space, and the self.

N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a serotonergic psychedelic, known to rapidly induce short-lasting alterations in conscious experience, characterized by a profound and immersive sense of physical transcendence alongside rich and vivid auditory distortions and visual imagery. Multimodal neuroimaging data paired with dynamic analysis techniques offer a valuable approach for identifying unique signatures of brain activity - and linked autonomic physiology - naturally unfolding during the altered state of consciousness induced by DMT. We leveraged simultaneous fMRI and EKG data acquired in 14 healthy volunteers prior to, during, and after intravenous administration of DMT, and, separately, placebo. fMRI data was preprocessed to derive individual dynamic activity matrices, reflecting the similarity of brain activity in time, and community detection algorithms were applied on these matrices to identify brain activity substates; EKG data was used to derive continuous heart rate. We identified a brain substate occurring immediately after DMT injection, characterized by hippocampal and medial parietal deactivations and increased superior temporal lobe activity under DMT. Deactivations in the hippocampus and medial parietal cortex correlated with alterations in the usual sense of time, space and self-referential processes, reflecting a deconstruction of essential features of ordinary consciousness. Superior lobe activations instead correlated with audio/visual hallucinations and experience of "entities", reflecting the emergence of altered sensory experiences under DMT. Finally, increased heart rate under DMT correlated positively with hippocampus/medial parietal deactivation and the experience of "entities", and negatively with altered self-referential processes. These results suggest a chain of influence linking sympathetic regulation to hippocampal and medial parietal deactivations under DMT, which combined, may contribute to positive mental health outcomes related to self-referential processing following psychedelic administration.

Toward epistemic justice in socio-scientific decision-making: How youth make sense of lively COVID-19 and vaccines data

ABSTRACT Background Studies of socio-scientific decision-making in times of crisis are in their infancy. This study investigates how minoritized youth engage and make sense of newly developed COVID-19 vaccines and their intersections with the evolving multi-pandemic. Guided by theories of lively data, data sense and epistemic injustice, we center the experience of four Palestinian Arab minority youth in Israel context throughout the ongoing pandemic. Methods Our analysis of long-form interviews and experience sampling was based on critical grounded theory. We also used counter-narrative to bring witness, capture youth first-hand experience, and recenter marginal knowledge. Findings Our findings show how youth come to understand the multidimensional nature of the crisis through their first-hand sensory experiences with COVID-19 data. They used their agentic positions with data to make their lively data matter. Their sense- and decision-making shifted as the pandemic and reflected how they understood it as a health hazard, vaccine efficacy, the political, scientific narratives and policies regarding the vaccine. The pandemic proposed solutions resonant with the science they understood and in negotiation with broader context of local, national, and global pandemic data. Contribution The study offers implications for learning with lively data toward epistemic justice in data science and socio-scientific decision-making.

A Comparative Analysis of Cold Brew Coffee Aroma Using the Gas Chromatography-Olfactometry-Mass Spectrometry Technique: Headspace-Solid-Phase Extraction and Headspace Solid-Phase Microextraction Methods for the Extraction of Sensory-Active Compounds.

Coffee, one of the most widely consumed commodities globally, embodies a sensory experience deeply rooted in social, cultural, and hedonic contexts. The cold brew (CB) method, characterized by cold extraction, is a refreshing and unique alternative to traditional coffee. Despite its growing popularity, CB lacks defined preparation parameters and comprehensive analysis of its aromatic composition. In this study, we aimed to obtain a representative extract of the volatile matrix of CB and characterize the aroma of sensory-active compounds using advanced techniques such as headspace-solid-phase Microextraction (HS-SPME) and headspace-solid-phase extraction (HS-SPE) for volatile compound extraction, followed by gas chromatography-olfactometry-mass Spectrometry (GC-O-MS) for compound identification. Optimization of the HS-SPME parameters resulted in the identification of 36 compounds, whereas HS-SPE identified 28 compounds, which included both complementary and similar compounds. In HS-SPME, 15 compounds exhibited sensory activity with descriptors such as floral, caramel, sweet, and almond, whereas seven exhibited sensory activity with descriptors such as chocolate, floral, coffee, and caramel. This comprehensive approach to HS-SPME and HS-SPE aroma extraction with GC-O-MS offers an efficient methodology for characterizing the aroma profile of CB, paving the way for future research and quality standards for this innovative coffee beverage.

Natural five-sense experience and positive and negative emotions: the mediating role of nature connectedness

ABSTRACT Nature experience is a relatively easy and beneficial measure for improving emotions. Individuals experience nature through proximal senses (tactile, gustatory, and olfactory) and distal senses (vision and audition). This study examined the relationships between diverse natural senses experience and individuals’ positive and negative emotions, along with the mediating role of nature connectedness. We recruited 978 college students (M age = 20.09 ± 1.09 years old) from Beijing, China. The results showed that tactile experience (e.g. touching trees and water) was negatively related to negative emotions, while gustatory experience (e.g. tasting fresh fruits) was positively correlated with positive emotions. Furthermore, nature connectedness mediated the relationship between other natural sensory experiences and positive and negative emotions, except for the insignificant mediation between olfactory experiences and negative emotions. Therefore, individuals should emphasize the role of the proximal senses (especially tactile and gustatory experiences) during nature experiences and increase nature connectedness to maintain positive emotions.

Haptic poetics and community (re)building in Swinburne’s The Flogging Block

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Swinburne’s unpublished manuscript The Flogging Block and its 2011 transcription produced by Mark McDougal. Caricaturing the corporeal punishment at Eton, Swinburne’s poem integrates touch, sound, and sight in the text. However, the transcription seems to compromise this multimodality in a print medium. McDougal hopes that his inadequate rendering of Swinburne’s hands could be completed by future interested readers with higher technologies. My article is an interested response to this hope and reads McDougal’s adaptation as a haptic mediation of Swinburne’s multimodal poetics. Through the lens of Sara Ahmed’s disorientation theory, I argue that Swinburne’s poem disorients readers’ sensory experience of language, critiques his contemporary ideological repression of body, and rebuilds a community based on bodily connections. The first part of the article conducts a reversed reading that first examines McDougal’s haptic mediation of Swinburne’s manuscript and then explores Swinburne’s techniques of sensory disorientation. The second part relates this sensory disorientation to Swinburne’s republican project of building a community through appropriating pornographic techniques and through stressing the role of rhyme. Both McDougal’s adaptation and Swinburne’s manuscript endeavour to recover our lost intimacy with language, with one another, and with the world.

Trafficking | Transmission | Translation: Exploring Embodiment as a Mode of Knowledge Construction in Science Art Installations

Abstract Science art practices are often framed as science communication in a manner that overlooks the capacity of the arts to provide engagement opportunities beyond discourse. The authors perform a thematic analysis of audience interviews from scientific media art installations that depict complex, intangible, invisible, and ephemeral scientific phenomena, specifically focusing on medical nanotechnology. The analysis reveals that visitors recognize sensorial experiences beyond traditional science communication, while scientists’ experiences expanded their definition of engagement. The authors argue that scientific media art practices act as sites of meaning-making and non-discursive engagement that create reflective and embodied contexts for encounters with emerging technologies.

Using realia in teaching english vocabulary to a mildly intellectually disabled student

This research analyzes the benefits of using realia as a teaching tool to teach English vocabulary to a student with mild intellectual disability. As background, it is known that the use of real objects improve comprehension and retention of new words, providing a more attractive and effective learning experience; this in turn, can be adapted to the needs of students with this condition. The study was carried out with a 10-year-old student with MID, who participated in a series of six classes, in which she was taught vocabulary through the use of tangible elements, supported by interactive activities. The main focus was the acquisition of new vocab through the Total Physical Response method, which not only supports language acquisition but also encourages sensory experiences and hands-on understanding, contributing to the effective development of communication skills. An action research design was used that included the phases of problem identification, planning, implementation, and reflection, framed within a qualitative approach. The findings suggest that the integration of realia in vocabulary instruction not only supports cognitive development but also promotes a more inclusive, dynamic learning environment.