So my boss decides to spice it up a bit, and mixes in some hot salsa. I didn't notice. Each day he gradually added more until it was all the hot stuff. I didn't notice. He went out and bought hotter stuff. For some reason the whole office was watching me when I made some quiet comment about the mild salsa being hotter than it used to be. They thought that was pretty funny.
But I really didn't notice. If you can lie to the tongue, why not the liver?
Yeah, that's what I always thought. Then I moved to New Mexico, and got my tongue, gums and throat handed to me on a plate.
By the time the calf had become a bull, the farmer was so strong he could carry a bull the length of his field while talking on his cell phone.
Or so they say...
It's certainly true that suggestion can change ones perception of wine (or any flavor), but I don't think it's clear that it's the primary factor.
Of course, you're not supposed to be an expert. But still, seems like a hypocritical thing to make fun of someone else for.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72501-w?mc_cid=2b...
We really need to teach those things in school now, so that our children do not reject them reflexively as voodoo and unscientific.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4082307/
Emotionally relevent hormones, the most obvious of which is cortisol, influence all kinds of bodily processes like hunger, metabolism, energy, etc. And one interesting one I can think of in my own life is bladder activity - ever notice how, if you're on a long trip, you can hold in your pee without even thinking about it, but as soon as you get home and head towards the bathroom, it's like your bladder is about to explode? Or how you can still get up and pee even if it doesn't feel like you need to?
And I think many of us have probably had the experience where we got so wrapped up in an interesting and challenging task that we forgot to become hungry, and maybe even missed our opportunity to be hungry until the next day.
They didn't rely on the participants' subjective perception of time passing, but manipulated it through means that can't possibly be downstream of the subjects' blood sugar.
> Participants’ perception of time was manipulated by having them refer to clocks that were either accurate or altered to run fast or slow
For one, I imagine getting a group of people with no history of monitoring their blood glucose to accurately track it over a week would be tricky.
> Another potential confounding factor concerns the imbalanced number of times each group switched video games. Participants switched games every 15 min, according to the clocks they were given, so participants in the fast clock group switched more frequently than participants in other groups. One might propose that the increased switching in the fast clock group might have led to greater activity and exertion, causing blood glucose to decline more rapidly. The switching process entailed loading up a different video game on a computer, which is not a particularly demanding task. Even so, we controlled for this, to a degree, by instructing participants to alert the experimenters when it was time to change games, at which point the experimenters performed the actual switching. No actual effort was required of participants to make the change, aside from alerting the experimenter. It seems implausible that the effort required to signal the experimenter at switching times could have played a significant role in the intergroup differences observed.
They did not switch every 15 minutes! They switched every 15 fake minutes, ie. every 7 minutes in the fast group and every 30 minutes in the slow group. The paper waves this away, but I suspect that getting used to a new game takes more energy than they realize.
A way to test this would be by varying the time that the last game is played, in order to measure blood sugar change during beginning or end of a play phase. If this is correct, consumption should be bigger at the start and lesser at the end of each phase, regardless of how long it actually is.
They also claim no effect on subjective reported stress level (but those who switched more times did report more stress, just not to a statistically significant degree...)
Although the games were reportedly "easy" I do think it'd be interesting to see whether there were any meaningful differences in the approaches to the game and levels of performance of the different cohorts. And if they performed similarly but those on a slower "subjective timescale" received vastly more "reward" indicators like higher scores, "you wins" or proportions of a grid/map ticked off because they played each game for longer, that would also be a confounding factor
Instead the criteria is highly dependent on the patient's expectations and second to that that their willingness to work with the vision they receive. Notwithstanding physical limitations it's this difference in attitude which results in real world, measurable, improvements in the patient's visual acuity.
Outside of the op space, a similar-ish issue exists with multifocal glasses (and contact lenses) - these technologies work, but how well they work is highly dependent on the patient's expectations.
That said, assuming it’s accurate — that’s kind of an amazing physiological response to perceived time. I wonder if other systems can be impacted or what would cause this particular system to be impacted? I could see people’s metabolism changing based on perception(s).
So many questions, but an exciting and interesting area.
So while expectation of time would be a factor, it wouldn't be the only factor and that alone couldn't break out of the physical constraints of the system.
I think hunger is comparable: one can be hungry over time as a result of the natural changes in their body, or they can become hungry merely by looking at appetising food. I think psychology can play a useful, but complicated role.
It is an abstraction superimposed and assumed by an external observer.
Molecular biology does not have notion of time, only phases of other cyclical processes which is a completely different "mechanical" notion.
Serotonin is involved in all of it. The perception of time. As well as insulin secretion and blood glucose control, directly. As well as inflammation, which is a big part of diabetes, as well as in psychedelics – serotonin receptor 5-HT2A activation is immunomodulatory; It reduces inflammation.
I'd also be curious to know what impact the speed of the clock had on game play, did it impact their ability to play in any measurable way?
But consider the effects of suggestion upon the more malleable parts of a person. Your mind and opinion.
Consider the powers of authority, conformity, marketing, indoctrination.
Black is white. Up is down.
Is there potential treatments that could result from this?
I wonder if type one also exhibits this trait?
Depression is a lot like being severely sick. Even if you manage to keep up exercise and diet, physical health takes a dive.
Mania… everything goes into overdrive. The necessary repair work isn’t being done, even if you get enough sleep.
Eating the wrong food or too much exertion can trigger episodes.
Mental health is very much tied to physical health. And vice-versa.
I'll read this in full when I have time but I would be very surprised if the causation is not completely reverse of what is suggested.
Once I learned it, I would place my orders saying: "– Yes, hot please. Your hot, not mine."
As for spicy snacks, nothing can beat Takis Fuego! :)
The original study finds that the terms we use for flavor (partly) encode the tuple of flavor and color. That is, given two identical smelling / tasting liquids, subjects will pick different vocabulary to describe the flavor when the liquid is red vs clear.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQBs2xPDGKU (English subtitles available) [2] Incidentally they're the ones who made the hit "What Does the Fox Say?"
XX Hot (cultivar) are particularly good - clocking in at 60k Scoville units
Why is the color so important? Mostly because it's visible to us noobs.
So what depends on why things are different colors. For instance, red velvet cake is just vanilla cake dyed red with food coloring. In that case, there wouldn’t be a difference in taste. On the other end, vanilla bean ice cream has black specks distributed throughout from the contents of the vanilla bean itself. If you substituted black pepper, it might look the same but it would not taste the same. As Niksko explained, red and white wine are different due to differences in ingredients and different processes which impart different flavor and color.