Scientifically how does the brain know how Spaghetti tastes?

When we eat food, we only tastes the very basics of the food like salty, sour, bitter and sweet. It's the smell of the food that gives us the richness of flavor in so many foods. So the question is, how does the brain know how Spaghetti tastes? It's sort of like the question mouse had in the Matrix when he asked about Tasty Wheat.



This is more evidence that bolsters Penrose and Hameroff's theory of the Quantum Mind. Most food would essentially taste the same if the brain didn't perceive the qualia of the food. Proto-Conscious in the theory of the Quantum Mind is related directly to qualia. This is why when we have a cold, you can't seem to taste anything. Here's more:

While the tongue has thousands of taste buds to measure the four primary tastes — salty, sour, sweet, and bitter — the olfactory receptor cells at the top of the nasal cavity measure the odors that provide you with the sumptuous (or not so sumptuous) flavors associated with certain foods. The sense of smell is actually responsible for about 75 percent of what is typically thought of as the sense of taste. So if your nasal passage is blocked by mucus that keeps you sniffling and sneezing, your olfactory receptor cells aren't being visited by those odors. This leaves everything tasting pretty much the same.

goaskalice.columbia.edu...

And this:

Odorants stimulate receptor proteins found on hairlike cilia at the tips of the sensory cells, a process that initiates a neural response. An odorant acts on more than one receptor, but does so to varying degrees. Similarly, a single receptor interacts with more than one different odorant, though also to varying degrees. Therefore, each odorant has its own pattern of activity, which is set up in the sensory neurons. This pattern of activity is then sent to the olfactory bulb, where other neurons are activated to form a spatial map of the odor. Neural activity created by this stimulation passes to the primary olfactory cortex at the back of the underside, or orbital, part of the frontal lobe. Olfactory information then passes to adjacent parts of the orbital cortex, where the combination of odor and taste information helps create the perception of flavor.

www.brainfacts.org...

So Scientifically there's no explanation as to why Pancakes tastes like Pancakes or why Spaghetti taste like Spaghetti. The Quantum Mind answers this question. It's because of the qualia of Proto-Conscious embedded in space-time at Planck scales.

It's no surprise then that the sense of smell is being connected to quantum vibrations.

Study Bolsters Quantum Vibration Scent Theory

Yet here's a twist: odorant molecules typically contain many hydrogen atoms. And hydrogen comes in multiple forms, each very chemically similar to the others. But those different isotopes of hydrogen do strongly affect how a molecule vibrates. So deuterium, containing a hydrogen nucleus that has both a proton and a neutron (as opposed to plain-old-hydrogen that has just a proton), might help scientists discriminate between the proposed vibration and standard chemical binding theories of olfaction.

According to new research published today in PLoS ONE, human noses can sniff out the presence of at least some kinds of deuterium. Specifically, experimenters found regular musk molecules smelled different from ones that contain deuterium. "Deuterated" musks, says researcher Luca Turin of the Alexander Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research Center in Greece, lose much of their musky odor and instead contain overtones of burnt candle wax.

The finding represents a victory for the vibration theory, Turin says. And, he adds, it makes some sense, when you consider the purpose of our olfactory ability—whatever its mechanism is. The natural world contains millions of types of molecules. Some are good for us, and some are bad. The nose helps to distinguish one from the other. "Olfaction is trying to be like an analytical chemist," Turin says. "It's trying to identify unknowns." Chemists identify unknowns using spectrometers. Olfactory receptors, according to the vibration theory, act like little wetware spectrometers.

Adding to Turin's quiver is a 2011 finding in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicating that drosophila flies, too, can smell the difference between a molecule called acetophenone (which to humans smells sweet) and its deuterated cousin.

www.scientificamerican.com...

This is very interesting because there was just a recent paper out about the discovery of quantum vibrations in Microtubules called Discovery of quantum vibrations in 'microtubules' corroborates theory of consciousness.

esciencenews.com...

When I eat Turkey, why does it taste like Turkey? When I eat a Perch sandwich, why does it taste like Perch? The material brain has no answer for this. The Quantum Mind does though and because of the qualia of Proto-Consciousness we should experience and perceive the bursts of different flavors that occur when we eat different foods.

reply to post by neoholographic


whe know what pasta tastes like because of the gift of knowledge that the flying spaghetti monster has placed in everyones heart

reply to post by neoholographic

Scientifically how does the brain know how Spaghetti tastes?

Because your mom told you so.

There's a reason why Mouse gets it first.

Five tastes, you forgot the flavor umami. It is the fifth taste.

Umami is the taste of aged or fermented.... basicly glutamates/glutamines. The spagetti has this taste, so do the tomatoes. Some spices also possess this taste if they are dried.

Far as we know, my "sweet" is not your "sweet".

Don't forget texture, too.

Otherwise, why bother with having to choose between pancakes or waffles?

reply to post by neoholographic


ok - a serious response , what does the following product taste of ? :

marmite

no I am being serious - give 10 000 people a spoon of marmite .

taste is subjective , not objective

reply to post by neoholographic


Is the sense the actual motion or is it just communicated by the motion? If no quanta moved at the frequency that the sense of spaghetti did, would that mean spaghetti wouldn't exist? Where is the actual concept of the sense of spaghetti?

Hopefully you understand what I am asking, if not, let me know so I can try to better articulate my question.

Edit:
Think like this: there are infinite ways you can say that spaghetti exists... perfectly cooked, raw, burned, this temperature, that temperature, this temperature while being slightly burned, that color, this color, etc....

So where is the concept that is communicated by all those different frequencies?

Junkheap


Otherwise, why bother with having to choose between pancakes or waffles?

It's important.

I prefer mine with peanut butter when I'm craving starch

It knows because His Noodly Appendage tells us what it tastes like.

reply to post by neoholographic


The brain doesn't know. It is the entire body that does. Hold some spaghetti in front of a brain and ask it what it tastes like. You'll get no response. A brain isn't capable of knowing. One requires a nose, a mouth, a tongue, and every cell involved in the act of eating in order to "know" what anything tastes like. No quantum assumptions are necessary.

reply to post by Words


And I´ll add past experiences, personal desires and a great dose of expectations, sometimes the most bland food tastes awesome while in certain social environments, for example eating cookies as a child with friends and family and eating cookies alone while being grown up...

Its a similar process as to why some westerners consider taboo eating dogs or rats or bugs, where its not taste but the idea of doing it what repulses them, or the insane reaction some people have while eating something and then someone tells them, you just ate rat, or possum, and then throwing up, at the time it didn't taste bad, its the idea that comes after...

Also socio cultural standards play a great role in defining taste in our brains...

As Words said it quite clear, the brain by itself is incapable of knowing much, just as a hard drive cant by itself run a program.

things sometimes are simpler, sometimes simple things have complex developments!

Here is a better question: Does Spaghetti taste the same to me as it does to you? How exactly do you know?

My mother things rye bread tastes sour. Whereas to me it tastes like grain and a little nutty, if its light. So do we even taste the same thing?

reply to post by Bleeeeep


Time ran out on editing my other post, but I wanted to add this question....


How can we distinguish spaghetti from a sense?

My question is like so:

If I create a figurine / statue / model of spaghetti, I am the one who has placed, into matter / physicality, the sense / interpretation / concept of spaghetti. Another person would then come along and sense the figurine as a figurine of spaghetti.

So how do we know that all matter / physicality is not this way? Why do we think it is anything but the images which consciousness has made of its concepts / senses?

The form is the sense or concept of consciousness...

The science of physics is becoming the philosophy of metaphysics... lol

Unity_99
My mother things rye bread tastes sour. Whereas to me it tastes like grain and a little nutty, if its light. So do we even taste the same thing?

Definitely not. I can prove it with this logic:

Taste is based largely on smell. This is pretty easy to prove if you have people hold their noses when tasting different things or if they have a cold...their sense of smell is drastically reduced, as mentioned in the OP

Maybe half the population can smell a pungent odor in urine after eating asparagus.

www.wisegeek.com...

Only those with a certain gene can break down the chemicals inside the asparagus into their smelly components, and only those with the proper gene can smell the results of that chemical breakdown. What's more, the two abilities aren't always embodied in one person. That is, those who produce it, can't always smell it, and those who can smell it don't necessarily produce it.

So there's simple dramatic proof of one gene's effect on smell, and I'm sure there are many much more subtle genetic differences. So we definitely don't all have the same sense of smell, therefore we don't all have the same sense of taste because the two are closely related.

Now about quantum effects, here is what I've learned from reading new-age literature. Anything that you can't exactly explain by normal means, can apparently be explained by sticking the word "quantum" in front of whatever is unexplained, and then that explains it. Never mind that the explanations have little to do with the formal quantum mechanics which I studied in graduate school. Granted quantum effects explain a wide range of things but a lot of this stuff reminds me of the movie "what the bleep do we know" where one minute they're talking about real scientific quantum mechanics, which has a firm basis in science, to the next minute talking about the reincarnation of a 15,000 year old Lemurian warrior, which has no basis at all in science. In other words, there is a lot of valid quantum science but also a lot of quantum nonsense out there, and unfortunately most people haven't studied the subject enough to tell where the line is between the two.

What about if you see and smell delicious aromas and plating and the food tastes terrible? I absolutely hate tarragon and many times in a restaurant will order things that contain it without knowing it because it isn't described in the menus. Food comes, looks great, smells great. I put the bite in my mouth expecting to taste wonderful and then blech! Spit it out and complain to wait person.

reply to post by neoholographic


Taste and smell are, basically, two types of the same chemical analysis, only for different concentrations of the substance. The fact that some of the receptors are located on your tongue, and other in your nasal passages, is not enough to classify them as orthogonal senses. By the way, the tongue receptors are also not uniform, there are several of them for different kinds of tastes. So, mathematically speaking, it takes all the spectrum of data to correctly reconstruct the taste.
May I ask you, how in your opinion the perception of taste is formed and where it exists physically? If brain deals only with homogeneous biochemical reactions, and the molecules of the substance do not cross the BBB, then how is the brain able to make this discernment? Or, maybe the perception is not located in the brain. Then where exactly does the taste of spaghetti exist and what defines it?

Spaghetti tastes good. What else is there to know?

It's one thing to define/describe the mechanics of some object or process we observe in nature, but another to say we all experience that object or process in the same way. One person may hate chicken livers while another person can't get enough of them. What you and I experience when observing what we both identify as the color red may be entirely different. The mechanics of what we both experience may be the same, and can be quantified and objectively described thoroughly and accurately using either classical or quantum methods, and yet still be a completely subjective experience.

It's this subjective side of things that our scientific methods can't capture. And it's this aspect I think has baffled us for millennia when trying to pin down consciousness. I wholeheartedly agree that any understanding of consciousness will likely be of a quantum nature. I've said it before, IMO our brains are not digital (binary) processors. Any desciption of it's workings must include the properties of non-locality, superposition, decoherence and entanglement. That's at a minimum, IMO. Actually everything I've just said is simply my opinion, as I'm no expert on the subject - I just find it fascinating.

In a similar thread here I said the following, and I think it's worth repeating: Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at Cal Tech, once made an insightful observation when he said, “We are part of the universe that has developed a remarkable ability: We can hold an image of the world in our minds. We are matter contemplating itself.” That has always stuck with me...

Great OP. Thanks...