Taste Thresholds: Quality Specific Variation with Human Aging

Weiffenbach, James M.; Baum, Bruce J.; Burghauser, Rosemary

doi:10.1093/geronj/37.3.372

Cited by 186 publications

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“…8 1 2 . 3 Thresholds (decibels) for six pure tones (500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 6000, and8000 Hz) were determined with a staircase method (for description of staircase procedure, see Weiffenbach et al 1982) Johnson, 1994;Stevens & Choo, 1998). Eleven probes were employed with different equidistant bar-groove widths that ranged from 0 .…”

Section: Hearing Testsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical illness and changes in sensory perception

Schiffman

2007

Proc. Nutr. Soc.

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Impairments of sensory perception that occur during a period of critical care can seriously impact on health and nutritional status, activities of daily living, independence, quality of life and the possibility of recovery. It is emphasized from the outset that sensory losses in criticallyill patients may or may not be related to their current medical condition. The present paper provides an overview of all five senses (vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch) and describes the factors that contribute to sensory losses in critically-ill patients, including medications, medical conditions and treatments and the process of aging itself. Cancer and stroke are two critical illnesses in which profound sensory decrements often occur. Many sensory complaints in patients with cancer are related to alteration in sensory signals caused by damage to the sensory receptors. However, some complaints, such as taste aversions in patients with cancer, are not related to altered sensory physiology per se but to learned aversions that arise during the noxious effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. The paper also reviews a study in which the sensory performance (of all five senses) was compared in three groups of elderly subjects: (1) patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass surgery; (2) patients with cardiovascular conditions but with no history of surgery; (3) healthy non-medicated age-matched controls. Performance of patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass surgery was worse than that for the other two groups, with taste and smell losses greater than for the other senses. The study demonstrates that critical illness (e.g. coronary artery bypass surgery) can exacerbate sensory losses in an older cohort.

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Section: Hearing Testsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical illness and changes in sensory perception

Schiffman

2007

Proc. Nutr. Soc.

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“…Murphy (1979) reported quality-specific age effects on taste thresholds. More recent research also shows that there are larger age effects on thresholds for bitter and salty than for sweet and sour stimuli (Weiffenbach, Baum, & Burghauser, 1982).Effects that appear at threshold may disappear at suprathreshold intensities. Is this the case with taste, or are there age-related differences in perceived intensity analogous to the liminal differences?…”

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Quality-specific effects of aging on the human taste system

Murphy

Gilmore

1989

Perception & Psychophysics

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Elderly! persons are known to have elevated taste thresholds, with those for bitter more affected by age, for example, than those for sweet. Do analogous quality-specific effects occur at suprathreshold levels? Young (mean age = 20.3 years, SD = 2.99) and elderly (mean age = 72.5 years, SD = 4.58) subjects made magnitude estimates of sweetness, bitterness, sourness, and saltiness for the unmixed components sucrose, caffeine, citric acid, and NaCI at three concentration levels for each. They also made magnitude estimates of the separate taste qualities in twocomponent mixtures of sucrose with each of the other three qualities, at various levels of the two components in each mixture. Magnitude estimates of taste intensity were interweaved with magnitude estimates of the heaviness of six weights, which subjects were to judge on the same subjective intensity scale: This is the calibration feature of the method of magnitude matching, and permits the comparison of elderly and young subjects on the absolute intensity of tastes.When unmixed components were judged, elderly subjects found the characteristic tastes of caffeine and citric acid less intense than, but those of sucrose and NaCI as intense as, younger subjects did. In judging mixtures, the elderly found bitterness, but not the other three qualities, less intense than did the young subjects.There is evidence that human chemosensitivity lessens with age (for reviews, see Murphy, 1986;Schiffman, 1986). Most psychophysical data on aging of the taste system are from threshold studies, which have demonstrated increased thresholds in the elderly. The effects of aging on taste need not be uniform across taste qualities, since different mechanisms almost certainly subserve the different qualities and more than one mechanism may encode stimuli of the same quality. Murphy (1979) reported quality-specific age effects on taste thresholds. More recent research also shows that there are larger age effects on thresholds for bitter and salty than for sweet and sour stimuli (Weiffenbach, Baum, & Burghauser, 1982).Effects that appear at threshold may disappear at suprathreshold intensities. Is this the case with taste, or are there age-related differences in perceived intensity analogous to the liminal differences? Hyde and Feller (1981) estimated exponents for the four taste qualities, and compared the size of exponents for young and old subjects. The elderly produced smaller exponents than the young did for bitter and sour stimuli (caffeine and citric acid), but not for sweet and salty stimuli(sucrose and NaCI). Cowart (1983) obtained similar results with magnitude estimation, except that she found no age effect on the exponent for citric acid. She also reported impaired ability to dis-

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“…Rifkin, Marks, & Bars, 1986;Cowart, 1983, in press;Hyde & Feller, 1981;'Murphy & Gilmore, 1989;Spitzer, 1988;Weiffenbach, Baum, & Burghauser, 1982;Weiffenbach, Cowart, & Baum, 1986). When we determined psychophysical functions for stimuli representative of the four basic taste qualities in a previous study (Murphy & Gilmore, 1989), the elderly's intensity estimates of bitter were the most depressed relative to young people's estimates, and their intensity estimates of sweet were the least depressed.…”

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Aging is associated with increased Weber ratios

Gilmore

Murphy

1989

Perception & Psychophysics

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To investigate whether age-associated changes in the human taste system are quality-specific, we compared young and elderly subjects' suprathreshold discrimination abilities for caffeine and sucrose. The method of constant stimuli was used to obtain just noticeable differences and Weber ratios. The elderly generated larger Weber ratios than did the young for both the medium and high concentrations of caffeine, but not for the low concentration. For example, a 74% increase in .005M caffeine was required to obtain a perceptible difference for the elderly, whereas a 34% increase produced a perceptible difference for the young. The Weber ratios for sucrose did not differ for the two age groups. The results of this study indicate that age-associated changes in the taste system are quality-specific. 555We wished to know whether impairment in the ability \ to discriminate just noticeable differences (INDs) Investigations of psychophysical functions, recognition thresholds, and detection thresholds for taste in the elderly demonstrate age-associated impairment (see Murphy, 1986, in press, andSchiffman, 1986, for reviews) and suggest the additional hypothesis that the effects of aging on the taste system may be quality-specific (Bartoshuk, This research was supported by Grant AG04085 from the National Institute on Aging to Claire Murphy. We are grateful to James Brown, for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, and to Jill Sniffen, Kim Malloy, and Diane Bodge for their gracious assistance in testing subjects. Magdalena M. Gilmore (formerly Jensen) is now at the Department of Psychology, Brown University, Providence, RI. Correspondence may be addressed to Claire Murphy, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-0551. Rifkin, Marks, & Bars, 1986; Cowart, 1983, in press;Hyde & Feller, 1981;'Murphy & Gilmore, 1989;Spitzer, 1988;Weiffenbach, Baum, & Burghauser, 1982;Weiffenbach, Cowart, & Baum, 1986). When we determined psychophysical functions for stimuli representative of the four basic taste qualities in a previous study (Murphy & Gilmore, 1989), the elderly's intensity estimates of bitter were the most depressed relative to young people's estimates, and their intensity estimates of sweet were the least depressed. Therefore, tastants representative of these two taste qualities were examined in the present study, and we hypothesized that larger age differences would be found in the discrimination of bitter, as opposed to sweet, stimuli.Thus, the present study addressed two questions. First, do elderly individuals require a greater increase in the concentration of a suprathreshold stimulus in order to experience a perceptible difference in taste sensation than young subjects do? Second, does the size of the Weber ratio depend not only on age, but also on the stimulus tested? METHOD SubjectsThe participants were 12 females, 67-77 years of age (M = 72.42, SD = 3.20), and 12 females, 18-25 years of age (M = 22.92, SD = 1.51). All of the elderly subjects were active, communitydw...

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Taste Thresholds: Quality Specific Variation with Human Aging

Cited by 186 publications

References 0 publications

Critical illness and changes in sensory perception

Critical illness and changes in sensory perception

Quality-specific effects of aging on the human taste system

Aging is associated with increased Weber ratios

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