"Multisensory Flavour Perception" Masterclass

Dates: June 10th & 11th
Location: Belco, Mérignac  (33700) FRANCE
Limited spots: Maximum 15 participants

Training in english

About Fabiana Carvalho:

Fabiana Carvalho is a neuroscientist who received her MSc in Biochemistry and her PhD in Psychobiology studying neural processes of perception and memory. She has also worked as a postdoctoral researcher on a project investigating sensory perception as an anticipatory and constructive process instead of a mere passive and reactive process.

She is currently a collaborating researcher at the University of Campinas, Brazil. Her research project “The Coffee Sensorium” is focused on understanding multisensory flavour perception and how it impacts the coffee drinking experience. She has published several scientific articles showing the effect of coffee cups and packaging on sensory and hedonic judgements of specialty coffee. This research project has several collaborators such as the SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) and Prof Charles Spence (University of Oxford, UK).

Over the course of two days, you will explore:

• The multisensory mechanisms that influence the perception of aromas and flavors

• Orthonasal and retronasal olfaction

• The impact of extrinsic factors such as color, touch, and sound

  
  

This is the first masterclass in a series designed to give you the opportunity to dive deeper into industry topics with renowned experts, in an exclusive and immersive setting.

DAY 1 - MULTISENSORY FLAVOUR PERCEPTION IN COFFEES

SUMMARY

The perception of flavour is perhaps the most multisensory of our everyday experiences. The latest research by neuroscientists increasingly reveals how the combination of gustatory, olfactory, and tactile stimuli gives rise to our flavour experiences. On top of the oral senses, vision and audition are also considered as factors that modulate flavour perception through anticipatory behaviour. The course ‘Multisensory Flavour Perception’ aims at addressing the contributions of distinct senses to flavour perception as well as the factors that can affect the flavour experience of specialty coffee. How can the characteristics of the coffee cup, the coffee label, and environmental sounds affect our perception of flavour in coffee?

CONTENT THEORY (9:30am – 12pm)

1) The senses of taste and smell, and the connections between tasting, the brain, and the environment: from receptors to the brain.

2) Bottom-up and top-down processing in the brain: Perception as recognition.

3) The sensory repertoire: Flavour perception as anticipation and expectation.

4) What does the colour red taste like: The construction of the flavour experience by the brain.

5) Multisensory integration and coffee: Product intrinsic and extrinsic factors (cups and packaging).

PRACTICE (1:30pm – 5pm)

1) Individual sensitivity to the basic tastes and to the main organic acids in coffee.

2) Are you a supertaster? Genetic specificities and sensitivity to bitterness.

3) Silky or velvety: The challenge of describing mouthfeel.

4) Aroma description using crossmodality (multisensory interaction)

5) Does this coffee taste red or brown? The effect of colour on flavour perception.

6) The effect of sound and haptic texture on the perception of flavour.

DAY 2 - AROMAS IN COFFEE: PERCEPTION AND DESCRIPTION

SUMMARY

How confident are you in describing aromas and flavour notes in coffee? If you find it a hard task, do not worry – in fact, olfactory description is a particularly challenging task. We humans have a superbly keen sense of smell, we have only minimal conscious awareness of smell and are extremely limited in their ability to describe olfactory experience. There are biological and cultural reasons that make it difficult to verbalize our sense of smell. However, it is essential that experts in odour, such as perfumers and food/drink professionals, are able to verbally describe the set of odours that are present in a given product. The olfactory performance can be improved with training which makes more effective the neural processing of the odorous stimuli as well as the subjective capacity of naming them. The course will discuss the neurobiology of the olfactory system. We will also present a series of training tools, such as crossmodality, which are effective in the identification of aroma and flavour notes.

CONTENT THEORY (9:30am – 12pm)

1) The neurobiology of the olfactory system: How are the volatile molecules captured and perceived?

2) The orthonasal and retronasal olfactory systems and the distinction between odor, aroma, and flavour.

3) The genetics of olfaction: When coriander smells like soap.

4) The role of attention in the olfactory identification.

5) The olfactory language: Combining cognitive and emotional concepts.

6) Crossmodality: The cross-talk between olfaction and the gustatory (‘sweet’ aroma), trigeminal (‘sharp’ aroma), and visual (‘green’ aroma) systems.

7) The main aroma families in coffee and tools to identify them using crossmodality.

PRACTICE (1:30pm – 5pm)

1) Categorization of aroma families by crossmodal description.

2) Description and identification of specific aroma notes.

3) Crossmodal description of top/head notes of perfume samples.

4) Retronasal smell: Role of basic tastes in temporal dominance of flavour notes.

5) Description of flavour notes in coffee samples: How do the volatiles impact the perception of taste and mouthfeel