Feel the Flavours

Synesthesia. One sense kicking another sense into action. Could our senses be tricking us? Could our beliefs or expectation interfere with what we sense exactly at a specific moment? According to scientific research, our brains tricks us all the time. An experiment was conducted where participants were asked to state the flavor of different colored m&m’s. Most gave different answers according to the color, for example, the green that corresponded with the flavor of lime. However, the truth was the all the m&m’s tasted the same except for the orange ones. This clearly suggests that because our brains are set to expect that different colors correspond with different flavors, we start to believe it, which causes us to “taste” different flavors. In this example, the senses of sight come into play together to enhance the sweetness of the chocolate.

Personally, I like very crispy textures. From my memory, I perceive crispy or crunchy foods to represent freshness. When I get sick, I realize that I lose my appetite. This is because when we taste, our taste buds and the sense of smell work together to “taste” the food in the mouth. Therefore, when I lose my sense of smell due to sicknesses, I find that I lose my appetite because the flavors of the foods are not completely enhanced, and so all I can experience is the texture of the substance on my tongue.

We rely on our sense of sight so much, that it amazes me how much our sight can influence our decision regardless of what our taste buds and scent tell us. It makes me wonder, if we are constantly deceived by our senses, how will we ever know what is right or wrong? What is true and what is false? Is what we see or taste or hear always what we really see or feel or taste? Or merely things we WANT and EXPECT to see, feel, and taste? As much as this article interested me, as I start to think more about this concept of knowing, the more lost I feel. Will I ever get a clear answer to what knowledge is?  Or will it always be a mixture of senses, beliefs, emotions, and perception?