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Sorry, picky eaters: Taste is a figment of our imaginations, study suggests

(Thinkstock)
(Thinkstock)

It can be tough for us picky eaters, especially around the holidays when so much cooking gets done by someone else, in a foreign kitchen, with who-knows-what ingredients. People with very particular tastes take a lot of ribbing from family and friends who might think we’re being difficult for fun, or attention.

A recent study from the Columbia University Medical Center, published in Nature, however, has scientists convinced that our personal tastes and food aversions are an innate part of our brain. This doesn’t just mean that you’re off the hook for hating your Dad’s liver and onions. It also leads us to the possibility that if you wanted to, someday you might be able to make yourself like them, with science.

The study, which followed on earlier research by lead author Charles Zucker, went beyond mapping the link between taste receptors in the tongue and their corresponding brain cells. Researchers took this information and used it to manipulate the taste cells within the brains of lab mice, producing the sensory perception of sweet and bitter in the absence of any actual taste.

These two tastes - sweet and bitter - are perhaps the most important for humans and most other mammals. Sweetness is a sign of calorie and nutrient-dense foods rich with energy, vitamins and minerals essential to life. Bitter, on the other hand, signifies the presence of a great deal of alkaloids, marking a substance that is dangerously poisonous or psychotropic.

Because of their importance, the perception of these two tastes make up two larger, easily-identifiable portions of the brain. Researchers stimulated specific neurons in these areas using optogenetics, a process of “switching” off and on certain cells with exposure to light.

In this video at the Washington Post, you can see what Zucker describes as the most surprising of their findings, “... they didn't just report sweet or bitter as they'd been trained to do, but much to our surprised they developed the full behavioral response." When given water after having its bitter-perceiving neurons stimulated, the mouse tries to wash its tongue off with its hands, doing its best to remove the poison it believes is in the water.

Zucker believes this is just the beginning for mapping the intricacies of the human brain, but even such a small discovery could have huge implications on our health and lifestyles. “If we can better understand the logic behind these circuits,” reports Rachel Feltman, “we might be able to find less invasive ways of tweaking them when they go wrong.” From reversing food aversions to healing certain eating disorders, this could be the beginning of an entirely new way to think about reality.