In 1975 , a man sustained a terrible combat injury to his brain that leave him , among other things , ineffective to discern tasting . He could n’t tell sugar water from salt water . In 2005 , one experimentation caused him to strongly prefer shekels to salt . Here ’s the tweak that changed things .
Patient B has spent much of the last thirty years under aesculapian care . In 1975 , brainpower excitement put him in a comatoseness , and when he woke up he could n’t lay in any new information . He could only hold on to information for about forty seconds at a time . Neuroscientists were eager to experiment on him – with the right ethics board supervision of course – and not just because of the memory loss .
A damaged corpus amygdaloideum left Patient B with no ability to register disgust . He could n’t even fathom the feeling . When asked about a story about a character who threw up , he believed the fictitious character felt hungry . He felt no disgust at the wicked solid food he was serve . He was n’t even able to distinguish between a little cup of salt piss and shekels H2O .
Thirty years after his injury , researchers give him the sugar and saltiness body of water psychometric test again , except they colored the water red and green . The vividness did n’t agree to the content of the H2O . Sometimes the sugar water was crimson , and sometimes it was light-green . No matter what color it was , Patient B suddenly insist on only pledge the sugar water . He sometimes refused to tope the saltiness water at all , and this was a bozo who pronounced everything he ate or tope delicious .
B was not aware of the sweetness . He did n’t taste anything , consciously . All the same he “ tasted ” the sugar water and the salt water . The research worker think that , somehow , he must have tasted it all along , without being consciously mindful of it . The colors for some understanding give the portion of his brain that really tasted the substances a line of communication to his conscious mind . The line of communicating was primitive – this color body of water goodness , that colouring water forged – but it did let him to consciously “ taste , ” even though it should have done nothing of the sort .
paradigm : Evan Amos
[ Source : Tasty : The Art and Science of What We exhaust . ]
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