Taste learned associations

Tokita K, Karadi Z, Shimura T, Yamamoto T. 2004. Centrifugal inputs modulate taste aversion learning associated parabrachial neuronal activities. J Neurophysiol 92 265-279. 

Colour influences other sensory characteristics and hence food discrimination through learned associations. The major mechanism prevaihng within colour/ taste and colour/aroma interactions is one of association with a specific product and specific product type. Wine and beer flavours are greatly affected by colom and assessments of port wine aroma and flavour are irtfluenced by the ability to see the samples (Williams et al. 1984). Provided the flavom does not depart too much from that expected from its colom, the colom appears to determine the quality of red wine (Timberlake 1982). Characteristic colom/taste/flavom associations of specific fraits mose with evolution of colom vision skills. We appear to have a learned response to colom and sweetness through orange or red fruit being normally riper, more edible and sweeter. Similm associations for other flavoms such as saltiness and bitterness are more doubtful. (Clydesdale... 

Martin, L.T. J.R. Alberts. 1979. Taste aversions to mother s milk the age-related role of nursing in acquisition and expression of a learned association. J. Comp. Physiol. Psych. 93 430-445. 

Several sensory modalities can be involved in complex interactions involving at least three cues rats learnt better to associate the bitter taste of quinine in water with a context such as a black or white box if a pyrazine was also present (the specific compound used was 2-methoxy-3-isobutyl pyrazine) (Kaye etal, 1989). It is said the odor potentiates learning the connection between taste cue and context. ... 

Odors affect human behavior more than we realize. They are now appreciated as important in human health and disease. Above all, the powerful role of learning is impressive. Odors become associated with pleasant and unpleasant experiences and can retain their hedonic value lifelong. This applies to food, to social and sexual relationships, and to environments such as houses, workplaces, or landscapes. Writers rather than scientists have described such anecdotes. In Remembrances of Things Past, Marcel Proust evoked a flood of childhood memories by the taste of a madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea. Jean-Paul Sartre tells in his autobiography Les Mots how the halitosis of his grade-school teacher became to him the odor of authority. 

The main difference between hungers and emotions has been that hungers are more obviously controlled by the deprivation or supply of specific concrete stimuli. Even so, hungers for specific objects are extensively influenced by learned processes called tastes, and thus have some of the cultural specificity typical of emotions. To develop a taste for yak butter or blubber you must leam to associate their fatty flavor with satisfaction to develop a taste for an abused substance, you must come to associate the chemical taste of alcohol or the disgust and nausea of heroin injection with the euphoria of the high. 

Over the centuries, humans as well as other animals have learned to associate tastes and odors, in particular, with life-threatening situations. Human excreta, for example, is a foul odor. In some fashion, humans have learned to associate such odors with unpleasant, unhealthy living conditions. The odor of smoke produces dual associations—a log burning... 

Lee, J. C. and Bemays, E. A., Food tastes and toxic effects associative learning by the polyphagous grasshopper Schistocerca americana (Drury) (Orthoptera Acrididac), Ariim. Behav., 39, 163, 1990. 

Finally, the two pentacosene isomers, 7-P and 9-P, are apparently tasted during male licking and induce a synergistic effect on the frequency and duration of attempted copulation. The copulatory effect of 9-P was supported by the discovery that males can learn to associate this CHC with unconditional aversive stimuli produced by an unreceptive fly -conditioned flies attempted to copulate less frequently and less intensively with flies carrying more 9-P (Siwicki et al., 2005). 

Fanselow, M. S. Birk, J. 1982. Flavor-flavor associations induce hedonic shifts in taste preference. y4/i//w. Learning Behav. 10, 223—22S. 

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