Psychology in and out of the kitchen: smells, tastes and brains.

Jeffrey Steingarten once asked himself, when writing about his food obsession, who was having all the fun: was it really him or was it his brain? This talk looks at the psychology of smell, taste and eating and describes some of the novel, unusual and ground-breaking studies that have examined the effect of smell and taste on behaviour and on food consumption. What is sensory-specific satiety and why might it be important to your dinner party? Does the brain respond to specific tastes and smells? Can we be conned into smelling something we can't? Are there some smells we cannot detect? Can we train the sense of taste in infants? What role does the brain play in our appreciation of food pleasantness? Where in the brain does taste, smell, sight, temperature and touch converge to produce flavour? What is the link between sex pheromones and eating? What are the effects of brain injury on eating, smelling and tasting? Can scent influence decision-making, memory, reaction time, pain perception, perception of others, even driving performance? And what features of a restaurant make you eat less, and make you eat more? The talk will provide some unexpected answers to these questions.

Conference arranged by Institute for Cultural Research.