The Multisensory Perception of Flavour

Can what you hear influence what you taste? Is the nose more important for flavour than the mouth? When it comes to our perception of flavour, does it even make sense to talk about sight, and sound, smell, touch and taste as separate senses? What can multisensory illusions tell us about how we perceive our surroundings, and how the senses collaborate to give us our picture of the world? Charles Spence and Barry C Smith will explore the neuroscience and philosophy of tasting with some practical demonstrations, and explore the role the brain plays in the pleasures of eating?

About the speakers:

Barry C Smith is a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Philosophy in the School of Advanced Study, University of London where he co-directs a Centre for the Study of the Senses. He is the editor of Questions and Taste – the Philosophy of Wine (Oxford University Press 2007). He is a frequent contributor to In Our Time, and Nightwave, and resented a four part series for the BBC World Service on ‘The Mysteries of the Brain’. He is a contributor to The World of Fine Wine and writes a monthly wine column for Prospect Magazine. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley and at the École Normale Supérieure.

Barry has organised three international conferences on Wine and Philosophy, in London, San Francisco and Pollenzo, and spoken twice at the international Wine Active Compounds conference, 2008 and 2011 in Beaune. In addition, he is co-coordinator of an international research project on The Nature of Taste jointly run by the University of London and New York University. His research on flavour perception involves collaborations with oenologists at the Centre de Science de Gout, Université de Bourgogne, and he is a member of the network of the Chaire UNESCO Culture et Tradition du Vin. He is on the editorial board of Territoires du Vin and has been invited to speak at the conference ‘Les climats du vignoble de Bourgogne comme patrimoine de l’humanité’ in Dijon as a contributor to a volume which forms part of the submission to UNESCO to have the Climats de La Cote D’Or recognized as a World Heritage Site.

Professor Charles Spence is the head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory based at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University. He is interested in how people perceive the world around them. In particular, how our brains manage to process the information from each of our different senses (such as smell, taste, sight, hearing, and touch) to form the extraordinarily rich multisensory experiences that fill our daily lives. His research focuses on how a better understanding of the human mind will lead to the better design of multisensory foods, products, interfaces, and environments in the future. His research calls for a radical new way of examining and understanding the senses that has major implications for the way in which we design everything from household products to mobile phones, and from the food we eat to the places in which we work and live.

Over the years, Charles has consulted for a number of multinational companies advising on various aspects of multisensory design, packaging, and branding. He has also conducted research on human-computer interaction issues on the Crew Work Station on the European Space Shuttle. Charles and his group are currently working on problems associated with the design of foods that maximally stimulate the senses (together with Heston Blumenthal, chef of The Fat Duck restaurant in Bray). His group also has a very active line of research on the design of auditory, tactile, and multisensory warning signals for drivers and other interface operators (together with Toyota). Charles is also interested in the effect of the indoor environment on mood, well-being, and performance (together with ICI).

Charles has published more than 300 articles in top-flight scientific journals over the last 15 years. Charles 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, not to mention the 2008 IG Nobel prize for nutrition, for his groundbreaking work on the ‘sonic crisp’!