Nature Neuroscience - Mechanisms of scent-tracking in humans

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) is a non-… Alfredo Fontanini needs your support for Supporting Research and Education on Smell and Taste

AChemS, the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, is a scientific research organization dedicated to understanding the “chemical senses” of smell, taste, trigeminal irritation and internal chemoreception from the fundamentals of neurobiology to complex behavior.

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) is a non-… Alfredo Fontanini needs your support for Supporting Research and Education on Smell and Taste

Autobiographical memories activated by the senses, particularly smell and taste, can be among the most potent and influential, an experience labelled …

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) is a non-… Alfredo Fontanini needs your support for Supporting Research and Education on Smell and Taste

Our perception of the sensory world is constantly modulated by the environment surrounding us and by our psychological state; each encounter with the same stimulus can in fact evoke very different pe...

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) is a non-… Alfredo Fontanini needs your support for Supporting Research and Education on Smell and Taste

The gustatory system serves as a critical line of defense against ingesting harmful substances. Technological advances have fostered the characterization of peripheral receptors and have created opportunities for more selective manipulations of the nervous system, yet the neurobiological mechanisms underlying taste-based avoidance and aversion remain poorly understood. One conceptual obstacle stems from a lack of recognition that taste signals subserve several behavioral and physiological functions which likely engage partially segregated neural circuits. Moreover, although the gustatory system evolved to respond expediently to broad classes of biologically relevant chemicals, innate repertoires are often not in register with the actual consequences of a food. The mammalian brain exhibits tremendous flexibility; responses to taste can be modified in a specific manner according to bodily needs and the learned consequences of ingestion. Therefore, experimental strategies that distinguish between the functional properties of various taste-guided behaviors and link them to specific neural circuits need to be applied. Given the close relationship between the gustatory and visceroceptive systems, a full reckoning of the neural architecture of bad taste requires an understanding of how these respective sensory signals are integrated in the brain.

Here's why people make that "sour" face.

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) is a non-… Alfredo Fontanini needs your support for Supporting Research and Education on Smell and Taste

Their “laugh, then think” work found that garlic flavors transmit to human milk, and infants savored that flavor during breastfeeding

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) is a non-… Alfredo Fontanini needs your support for Supporting Research and Education on Smell and Taste

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery - Olfactory and taste receptors are ectopically expressed in multiple extra-nasal and extra-oral tissues, exhibiting potential functions in a diverse range of...

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) is a non-… Alfredo Fontanini needs your support for Supporting Research and Education on Smell and Taste

AChemS, the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, is a scientific research organization dedicated to understanding the “chemical senses” of smell, taste, trigeminal irritation and internal chemoreception from the fundamentals of neurobiology to complex behavior.

Of all the senses, smell is the least understood. Despite centuries of investigation, science can still offer no satisfying theory for why a particular substance smells the way it does. Nor do we understand in any detail how we are able to distinguish the smell of a peach from that of an apricot, or how a particular smell can trigger long-forgotten memories of a distant time or place. Human olfactory psychophysics, the study of how humans perceive odors, is possible because humans have acquired language. Human subjects can report directly if something smells, characterize the smell, or decide if two smells are distinguishable. Answers to these simple questions have the potential to provide insight into important questions: What (if any) is the relationship between the chemical structure of an odor and its perceived smell? What types of olfactory stimuli can be discriminated, and how is this accomplished in the nose and the brain? How does experience modulate our perception of odorants? There are of course many things that cannot be done in humans, for instance genetic manipulation and electrophysiology, but these types of approaches are successfully used in animal models.

Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Mammals detect the nutrient content, palatability and potential toxicity of food through taste buds that are present mainly in the tongue. In this Review, Roper and...

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) is a non-… Alfredo Fontanini needs your support for Supporting Research and Education on Smell and Taste