Multisensory Flavor Perception

Prof. Betina Piqueras-Fiszman is Assistant Professor in the Marketing and Consumer Behaviour group at Wageningen University. Previously she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford. She specializes in food sensory science and consumer behavior. Her research focuses on the exploration of new ways to understand food perception, preferences, and motivations. She currently coordinates and teaches courses around these topics at Wageningen University and participates in related courses in other universities. She is currently working in several research projects in the interface between food technology, human nutrition, and consumer behavior to promote more pleasant and healthier eating experiences and undertaking a wide range of collaborations with multinational companies. Prof. Charles Spence is an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford. He is the director of the Future of Food Research group as well as being the head of the Crossmodal Research group which specializes in the research about the integration of information across different sensory modalities. He also teaches Experimental Psychology to undergraduates at Somerville College. He is currently a consultant for a number of multinational companies advising on various aspects of multisensory design. He has also conducted research on human-computer interaction issues on the Crew Work Station on the European Space Shuttle, and currently works on problems associated with the design of foods that maximally stimulate the senses, and with the effect of the indoor environment on mood, well-being, and performance. Charles has published more than 200 articles in top-flight scientific journals over the last decade. He has been awarded the 10th Experimental Psychology Society Prize, the British Psychology Society: Cognitive Section Award, the Paul Bertelson Award, recognizing him as the young European Cognitive Psychologist of the Year, and, most recently, the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany.

1. Introduction to multisensory flavor perception

Part I: Crossmodal effects on flavor perception 2. Taste-aroma-trigeminal-texture interactions 3. Attention and flavor binding 4. Synthetic nature of flavor 5. Oral referral 6. Oral-somatosensory texture 7. Color and flavor perception 8. Sound and flavor perception 9. Liking and the effect on flavor perception

Part II: Neuroscience of flavor perception 10. Flavor memory 11. Individual differences in multisensory flavor perception 12. Neuroscience of flavor 13. Neuroscience of reward/hedonics 14. Taste genetics on flavor perception 15. Relationship between flavor and internal sensations

Part III: Practical uses of multisensory flavor perception 16. Plateware, cutlery, and glassware 17. Branding flavor: Blind vs. sighted tasting 18. Marketing of multisensory flavor products