Olfactory/Gustatory Aphantasia/Hyperphantasia

[mengwong]

Aphantasia commonly refers to visual aphantasia: the inability to see with your mind’s eye.

Hyperphantasia is the opposite: some people can voluntarily conjure visual hallucinations with their eyes closed.

But what about olfactory and gustatory aphantasia?

Humans can recognize smells and tastes: “not quite how grandma made it, needs more X”

Are you chefs able to recall smells and tastes? Like, if I say, “remember that nice dinner we had at Noma last month? The fish dish – what was in it?”

Would you be able to bring it to mind, in every detail?

And could you imagine a new flavor combination right in your head?


https://www.quora.com/Are-you-able-...share=ac06a43c&srid=RBKZ&target_type=question

 

[bsfsu]

Have a look at Oliver Sacks book "Hallucinations". He talks about olfactory hallucinations where smells provoke memories.

 

[MarcelNL]

I'm not a chef but pretty sure that we're able to recall taste and smell in detail...some are better at it than others.

There is this TV program where a couple of chef's have to recreate an industrially made product like a Mars bar, some nail it the first time around and some struggle. Sure looks is technique but to get the flavors right you need to be able to identify components in great detail.

My 8 year old is quite good at it, he quite often calls out the very ingredients that I 'hid' in a dish...(we often play the game of 'secret ingredient'. I guess it helps to have an inventory, database in your head.
It's likely quite similar to recalling how something sounded, it progresses with experience to a point where some can do A-B in seconds (and yes confirmed by double blind testing)

 

[Jovidah]

I vaguely recall that for some reasons humans have a really good memory for smells. Hence why you get that thing where just a smell can bring people right back to 'grandmothers cooking'.
But you do have a lot of variety in how good people are in smelling. Probably also has a lot to do with environment and other habbits. So as someone who has always had issues with pollen and grew up in a house of 2 smoking parents...yeah... my sense of smell is utter trash.

 

[MarcelNL]

I vaguely recall that for some reasons humans have a really good memory for smells. Hence why you get that thing where just a smell can bring people right back to 'grandmothers cooking'.
But you do have a lot of variety in how good people are in smelling. Probably also has a lot to do with environment and other habbits. So as someone who has always had issues with pollen and grew up in a house of 2 smoking parents...yeah... my sense of smell is utter trash.

I vagely recall that humans have good memory is a killer quote

 

[Jovidah]

I vagely recall that humans have good memory is a killer quote

My cognitive psychology classes were distinctly bereft of unique odors.

 

[enrico]

If it was remarkable enough, yes

Are you chefs able to recall smells and tastes? Like, if I say, “remember that nice dinner we had at Noma last month? The fish dish – what was in it?”

Would you be able to bring it to mind, in every detail?

And could you imagine a new flavor combination right in your head?

But I believe it is hard to pinpoint why/how it is done. I’d think other areas in your brain would be helping you get there and create that “pathway”. Associations of smells and taste invoke other senses. I’d personally compare it to how music makes us feel, not how it sounds.

I could just be on another tangent though.

Before I head out though, your Noma example is good. They do very cool fermentation which certainly would create a lasting memory. Although that is more on the extreme side of flavor.

 

[MarcelNL]

functional MRI and PET might give some pointers to where the information is processed and then stored in the brain upon taste, showing some pictures of the products tasted may gove a clue about reproduction, but essentially how detailed the memory is probably won't show.

 

[rickbern]

Worth posting a link to Proust methinks!

https://www.dailygood.org/story/213...rom-remembrance-of-things-past-marcel-proust/

Here’s an excerpt, the whole thing doesn’t take that long to read


No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs.

 

[Jovidah]

functional MRI and PET might give some pointers to where the information is processed and then stored in the brain upon taste, showing some pictures of the products tasted may gove a clue about reproduction, but essentially how detailed the memory is probably won't show.

All that work has been done already quite a while ago. We have a fairly decent map of 'what gets processed where'. Not just 'which lobe' but also 'which part of which lobe'. Most of it was like you said derived with fMRI and PET.
Don't ask me where exactly smell is processed tho... wasn't my favorite class either. There's a reason I switched fields.

As this field of study develops we'll see more tech that works by manipulating the brain with for example electric fields. I think there's already some basic aids to help blind people that work in such a way.

 

[aporigine]

I cannot recall well at all an odor (except the simplest: ammonia, neutral hydrocarbon, sulfur dioxide) with any fidelity.

In fact lately I’ll catch a whiff of something and have a strong “I know that smell! but cannot place it!” reaction, with attendant flicker of frustration and embarrassment.

I never was one of those people who can taste a dish and get a read on ingredients or techniques.

 

[Vertigo]

Bloodhound nose here. I can catch a blown pilot light from a block away, and can pretty easily pick out most spices in a dish on smell.

That said, the *recall* is pretty weak. Better when I was younger. Old swiss cheese brain now. I have trouble remembering what I ate for dinner a week ago, let alone what it smelled like.

 

[mengwong]

Yeah, I’m particularly interested in recall and imagination… let me explain

It’s one thing to consciously analyze and verbalize at the time of tasting. E.g. at the cafe we take out pen and paper and write down “notes of pineapple, coffee, longan, and coffee”. Then a month later when someone asks what we thought, we say, “hang on, let me check my notes.”

At the other end of the spectrum is a sort of eidetic memory for scents: “11th of April, 2021, 2:33pm, go!”

“Ok, I had just finished lunch and the garlic from the marinara was still in my mouth when I sat down for a double espresso. Thinking back, the pour was a little fast, at, hmm, give me a moment, I’ll time it now, it was 18 seconds. It had notes of raspberry, coffee, lemongrass, coffee, and what’s that last one? I can taste it. Just need to put a name to it. Ah, the last note is rambutan. But because it was a short extraction it was missing the lychee and the prunes promised by the tasting notes. That would have been better. Imagining it now, that would have balanced the garlic that I can still taste.”

 

[stringer]

Aphantasia commonly refers to visual aphantasia: the inability to see with your mind’s eye.

Hyperphantasia is the opposite: some people can voluntarily conjure visual hallucinations with their eyes closed.

But what about olfactory and gustatory aphantasia?

Humans can recognize smells and tastes: “not quite how grandma made it, needs more X”

Are you chefs able to recall smells and tastes? Like, if I say, “remember that nice dinner we had at Noma last month? The fish dish – what was in it?”

Would you be able to bring it to mind, in every detail?

And could you imagine a new flavor combination right in your head?


https://www.quora.com/Are-you-able-...share=ac06a43c&srid=RBKZ&target_type=question

Smell and memory are very closely linked but it is a solved mystery. They use the same hardware. Do your Internet sleuth thing @mengwong, I am too lazy. But I read about it. New recent brain research. The olfactory processor is right next to the memory chip.

 

[stringer]

For me, I link certain flavors and smells too people and places. And I can approximate but never duplicate anything I have ever tasted or created. There is always a little something different and little something deja vu. And as I get older there is more and more of this is exactly the dish that I had somewhere. And I wish remembered which city that was in.

 

[Delat]

I grew up in Jamaica eating certain tropical fruits that aren’t readily available in the US - we moved when I was 9. When I had the chance to try some in my 30’s after not having them since a pre-teen, the flavors were immediately recognizable.

So I’d say anecdotally for me, distinctive flavors are definitely very deeply embedded in my memory. More complex and subtle flavors like specific meals are more vaguely remembered, like in general but not all the little nuances. I’m utterly in awe of sommeliers that can nail the region, grape, winery, and year of hundreds of random wines.

 

[mengwong]

For sure, taste triggers memory. It’s recognition, rushing beyond the levee of sense and flooding the past into the present.

But what about in the other direction? Can memory trigger taste? Can recall alone bring a scent to your mind’s nose?

If I ask you to recall “raw onion” – or even purely imagine something new – “coffee and banana and mint all together” – can that place the object into your sensorium?

Don’t say it’s impossible because the molecules aren’t in your nose. It should be equally impossible to will a visual hallucination into being because the photons aren’t in your eyes. But it happens anyway. (Not to me, but to others.)

 

[M1k3]

For me, I'll remember something vividly if there's something attached to it. Some memorable event, blowing my socks off on how good it tastes, learning something new that I'm truly interested in, etc.

If it's just run of the mill, just another day, dish was neither bad or outstanding, I'll most likely forget about it.

 

[Michi]

“Perfume” by Patrick Süskind is an outstanding read:

 

[mengwong]

I enjoyed that movie!

Related:

 

[blokey]

For sure, taste triggers memory. It’s recognition, rushing beyond the levee of sense and flooding the past into the present.

But what about in the other direction? Can memory trigger taste? Can recall alone bring a scent to your mind’s nose?

If I ask you to recall “raw onion” – or even purely imagine something new – “coffee and banana and mint all together” – can that place the object into your sensorium?

Don’t say it’s impossible because the molecules aren’t in your nose. It should be equally impossible to will a visual hallucination into being because the photons aren’t in your eyes. But it happens anyway. (Not to me, but to others.)

Don’t ask me about gas station washroom