Conflict regulation in flavour perception

Abstract

For many, flavour is the quintessential multisensory experience. The perception of flavour arises from the concurrent processing of inputs across a wide variety of sensory modalities, including but not limited to taste, smell, sound, several somatosensory channels as well as a range of other cues that help generate expectations about the flavour object (visual cues, smell through the nose, contextual cues, etc). For these bundles of inputs to be experienced as a unitary flavour percept, and to lead to a positive hedonic response, a certain degree of agreement between them is necessary. Remarkably, despite the mounting amounts of empirical evidence currently available, a framework to understand the processes triggered by sensory (in)congruence in flavour perception is lacking. Here, we consider the psychophysical, cognitive, and neural mechanisms related to flavour congruency within the framework of conflict monitoring. More specifically, we argue that brain mechanisms monitoring for, signalling, and eventually orchestrating the resolution of sensory discrepancies are decisive for the emergence of a unified subjective flavour percept, and its associated hedonic appraisal. This framework could help to elucidate certain well documented facets of the experience of flavour such as attentional processes, hedonic responses and perhaps even expectancy effects as well as suggest new avenues for future research.