senses

When you bite into a strawberry and experience something that feels like one unified sensation, you are experiencing the product of two entirely separate sensory systems — taste and smell — being fused by your brain into something that does not exist in the physical world. Flavor is a construction. The tongue detects five (or possibly six) basic chemical categories. The nose distinguishes potentially a trillion different molecules. Without the nose, the strawberry tastes like sweetened water. The neuroscience of how these signals combine reveals why eating is a fundamentally cognitive act.