The short version
- Danish researchers scanned 28 people as they sipped sweet and sour drinks while hearing music composed to sound sweet or sour.
- Taste with music produced stronger brain activity than taste alone, and sweet drinks with matching music beat mismatched pairings in hearing and taste areas.
- The sour effect was small, and no effect sizes are public yet because the paper itself could not be read.
A team led by Alberte Seeberg, whom AuntMinnie places at the University of Copenhagen, put 28 people in an fMRI scanner and gave them sweet and sour drinks. Sometimes the drinks came alone, sometimes the participants heard only music, and sometimes both arrived together. The music was composed to convey sweetness or sourness. Participants rated each sip or pairing for pleasantness, intensity and how well the sound fit the taste. The results are published in Scientific Reports.
Taste and music together produced stronger activity than taste alone in regions that handle taste and movement. Sweet drinks and sweet music lit up neighbouring areas tied to taste and reward, though not always the same spots. Sour drinks and sour music overlapped only slightly. When a sweet drink came with music that matched it, regions involved in hearing and taste responded more strongly than when the music did not match. The authors write that the effect was “primarily driven by the presence of simultaneous multimodal input”, meaning two senses arriving at once mattered more than any one tune.
We could not read the paper (the journal page sat behind a login), so this brief rests on AuntMinnie’s report. It gives no effect sizes and does not report whether the pleasantness ratings changed. It is one small scanner study of two tastes.
