In the spotlight

A visually oriented overview of sugar and sweetener ingredient trends.

Predicting the taste of molecules is of critical importance in the food and beverages, flavor, and pharmaceutical industries for the design and screening of new tastants. In this work, we have built ...

Researchers unveiled an intriguing intersection between our sense of smell and color perception, revealing how particular scents can subtly distort our color experiences.

In this paper we analyze some key concepts and problems in olfaction and argue that many concepts borrowed from vision are not helpful in elucidating the functions of human olfaction. This is illustrated with several examples. Olfaction is rarely in the focus of human attention. Olfaction is, compared to vision, a ‘hidden sense’, but still guides many important behaviors by way of unattended unconscious olfactory perception and implicit memory. Not all olfactory processing, however, is of an unconscious nature. Flavors, and the pleasures gained from them, are most often consciously perceived. These are experiences mostly determined by olfaction, taste, touch and chemesthesis. Our analyses lead us to conclude that olfaction should not be modeled on vision, neither conceptually nor with respect to the problems solved by the two senses. A critical examination of the ecological and physical constraints of olfaction and the other senses should be given priority. Such analyses will further our understanding of which problems are solved by the different senses and how they collaborate to guide us through the world.

Laying a controversial smell theory to rest

Several startups at the intersection of scent and technology have pulled in funding in the past few years. We take a look.

An electronic gustatory circuit that can "taste" may open the door to artificial emotional intelligence, according to the Penn State research team that developed the device.

AI could kill our creativity by making us think too alike. It also forces us to question what “creativity” is, and the different forms it can take.

AI scored in the top 1% of creative thinkers and this is definitely the weirdest timeline.

Pepper X registers at 2.69 million Scoville Heat Units - pepper spray is about 1.6 million units.

Researchers have uncovered the mechanism by which our taste buds detect ammonium chloride, exemplified by the distinct taste of salty licorice, popular in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. They say the discovery provides evidence for the existence of a sixth basic taste.