Influence of Acute Mental Arithmetic Stress on Taste and Pungency

Taste Sensor Assessment of Bitterness in Medicines: Overview and Recent Topics

In recent decades, taste sensors have been increasingly utilized to assess the taste of oral medicines, particularly focusing on bitterness, a major obstacle to patient acceptance and adherence. This objective and safe method holds promise for enhancing the development of patient-friendly medicines in pharmaceutical companies. This review article introduces its application in measuring the intensity of bitterness in medicine, confirming the achievement of taste masking, distinguishing taste differences between branded and generic medicines, and identifying substances to suppress bitterness in target medicines. Another application of the sensor is to predict a significant increase in bitterness when medicine is taken with certain foods/beverages or concomitant medication. Additionally, to verify the sensor's predictability, a significant correlation has been demonstrated between the output of a bitter-sensitive sensor designed for drug bitterness (BT0) and the bitterness responses of the human taste receptor hT2R14 from BitterDB (huji.ac.il). As a recent advancement, a novel taste sensor equipped with lipid/polymer membranes modified by 3-Br-2,6-dihydroxybenzoic acid (2,6-DHBA), based on the concept of allostery, is introduced. This sensor successfully predicts the bitterness of non-charged pharmaceuticals with xanthine skeletons, such as caffeine or related compounds. Finally, the future prospects of taste sensors are discussed.

Effects of visual and aromatic stimulations on the perception of five fundamental tastes

Taste perception is affected by various environmental factors. In the present study, we investigated the effects of visual and aromatic stimulations on stress responses and taste perception. Fourteen young healthy participants were assessed for stress levels and taste intensities under 5 different conditions: normal (no stimuli), watching an action scene, watching a forest scene, sniffing a rosemary aroma, and sniffing a lavender aroma. Compared to participants under the action scene condition, participants under the forest scene or under the rosemary aroma condition showed significantly lower stress levels. Furthermore, the forest scene condition significantly increased the saltiness intensity, whereas the rosemary aroma condition significantly increased the bitterness intensity. A positive or negative correlation was observed between the stress level and taste intensity of sourness and saltiness, respectively. These findings indicate that visual image and aroma have the potential to change taste perception as well as modulate stress conditions.