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Bitter Taste Disrupts Spatial Discrimination of Piperine-Evoked Burning Sensations: A Pilot Study - PubMed

  • ️Fri Jan 01 2021

Bitter Taste Disrupts Spatial Discrimination of Piperine-Evoked Burning Sensations: A Pilot Study

David T Liu et al. Biology (Basel). 2021.

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the perceptual similarity between piperine-induced burning sensations and bitter taste using piperine-impregnated taste strips (PTS). This pilot study included 42 healthy participants. PTS of six ascending concentrations (1 mg, 5 mg, 10 mg, 15 mg, 20 mg, and 25 mg piperine/dL 96% ethanol) were presented at the anterior tongue, and participants rated perceived intensity and duration. Then, participants performed a spatial discrimination task in which they had to report which of the two strips presented to the anterior tongue contained an irritating stimulus when one strip was always a PTS while the other strip was impregnated with either a single taste quality (sweet or bitter) or a blank strip. Repeated measures one-way ANOVA revealed that burning sensations of higher concentrated PTS were perceived more intense and more prolonged compared to lower concentrated PTS. McNemar's test showed that PTS were identified correctly significantly less often when presented with bitter strips compared to when presented with blank (p = 0.002) or sweet strips (p = 0.017). Our results showed that bitter taste disrupts the spatial discrimination of piperine-evoked burning sensations. PTS might serve as a basis for further studies on disease-specific patterns in chemosensory disorders.

Keywords: chemesthesis; chemical senses; gustation; piperine; tongue; trigeminal.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1

Psychophysiological responses to piperine impregnated taste strips (PTS) of Experiment 1 (n = 12). (a) The intensity of perceived irritation. (b) The duration (seconds) of perceived irritation. (c) The duration (seconds) until an irritation was perceived. The middle point represents the mean, and the error bars mark the standard deviation. Groups were compared using the rm-ANOVA test with post-hoc Tukey’s test. *** p < 0.05.

Figure 2
Figure 2

Bland–Altman plots for the reliability for the spatial discrimination task between two experimental sessions (n = 15). The vertical axis shows the differences in correctly identified piperine taste strips (PTS) between the first and second sessions. The horizontal axis shows the average number of correctly identified PTS between both sessions for each stimulus separately. The 95% limits of agreement are indicated within the grey area, the horizontal dotted line indicates the bias (mean difference). (a) Sweet taste strips compared to PTS. (b) Bitter taste strips compared to PTS. (c) Blank taste strips compared to PTS.

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