Natural genetic variation can have a pronounced influence on human taste perception, which in turn may influence food preference and dietary choice. Genome-wide association studies represent a powerful tool to understand this influence. To help optimize the design of future genome-wide-association studies on human taste perception we have used the well-known TAS2R38-PROP association as a tool t...

People vary in their habitual diet and also in their chemosensory abilities. In this study, we examined whether consumption of a Western-style diet, rich in saturated fat and added sugar, is associated with either poorer or different patterns of chemosensory perception, relative to people who consume a healthier diet. Participants were selected based on a food frequency questionnaire, which est...

We report on the results of two online experiments designed to compare different soundtracks that had been composed (by various researchers and sound designers) in order to evoke/match different basic tastes. In Experiment 1, 100 participants listened to samples from 24 soundtracks and chose the taste (sweet, sour, salty, or bitter) that best matched each sample. Overall, the sweet soundtracks ...

This paper evaluates the use of a maximum-likelihood adaptive staircase psychophysical procedure (ML-PEST), originally developed in vision and audition, for measuring detection thresholds in gustation and olfaction. The basis for the psychophysical measurement of thresholds with the ML-PEST procedure is developed. Then, two experiments and four simulations are reported. In the first experiment,...

Background: Smoking prevalence in Singapore has increased from 12.6 % in 2006 to 14.3% in 2011 despite restrictions on tobacco advertising and promotion act, largely due to the strategies of the tobacco industry such as cigarette packaging suggesting lower tar content to target the young and the health conscious. Objectives: To review the perception of health risks of different types of cigaret...

People in Western cultures are poor at naming smells and flavors. However, for wine and coffee experts, describing smells and flavors is part of their daily routine. So are experts better than lay people at conveying smells and flavors in language? If smells and flavors are more easily linguistically expressed by experts, or more "codable", then experts should be better than novices at describi...

Theory predicts that in markets with increasing returns, the number of differentiated products – and resulting consumer satisfaction – grow in market size. We document this phenomenon across 246 US radio markets. By a mechanism that we term “preference externalities,” an increase in the size of the market brings forth additional products valued by others with similar tastes. But who benefits wh...

This article reviews the literature on learning and memory in the soil-dwelling nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Paradigms include nonassociative learning, associative learning, and imprinting, as worms have been shown to habituate to mechanical and chemical stimuli, as well as learn the smells, tastes, temperatures, and oxygen levels that predict aversive chemicals or the presence or absence o...

Listening histories are rich sources of implicit information. Combining listening histories of multiple users allows comparisons in musical taste and discovery of new music, though few existing work specifically addresses this issue. In this paper we present two interactive visualizations which give users a deeper insight into consent and dissent in their listening behaviors, and help them to c...

In this paper, we model the elderly’s choice among health plans using data from a 1988 study of the Minneapolis—St. Paul Medicare health plan market. We show how attitudinal data can be combined with revealed preference data to provide more reliable estimates of consumers’ preferences for and perceptions of the attributes of choice alternatives. We develop an extended heterogeneous logit model ...