Individual Differences and the Chemical Senses

Individual differences and the chemical senses.

A powerful approach in the search for general principles in biology focuses on analyses of differences among individuals and groups. Such differences arise from variation in genes, variation in individual experiences and their interactions. The chemical senses provide a particularly rich source of such differences in both signal perception and signal production. In the following essay, we descr...

Individual differences in the chemical senses: is there a common sensitivity?

Taste, smell, and chemical irritation (so-called trigeminal sensation) combine in our daily experience to produce the supramodal sensation of flavor, are processed by partly overlapping neural mechanisms, and show functional interconnectivity in experiments. Given their collaboration in flavor formation and the well-established connections between these senses, it is plausible that polymodal de...

Aging and the Chemical Senses

Everyone is aware that the visual and auditory senses dim with age, and expects the elderly to need reading glasses and hearing aids. What about the chemical senses of smell and taste? In what ways do our perceptions of the volatile and water-soluble molecules we smell and taste change? How pronounced is that change? And how early in life does it begin? Before addressing these questions, it is ...

Chemical senses.

In the last decade, studies using approaches from molecular biology have substantially advanced our understanding of the early events in olfaction and taste. The many odorants that we can recognize may well interact with many distinct receptor proteins. Of the four taste qualities that we recognize, studies on salty and sour suggest that these tastes involve ion channels in the membrane of rece...

Chemical senses.