Geeks and Novices Taste Differently

[Innkeeper]

A tidbit from Dan Berger last week.

"When a wine lover hands you a glass of wine to identify, chances are you use your brain as much as do your palate. But casual drinkers may not.

That's the word from a series of tests done at a Rome hospital testing whether there was a difference in how wine professionals and amateurs taste wine.

The study conducted by Swedish bio-physicist Gisela Hagberg showed those trained to taste wine analytically use an area of the brain reserved for rational, intellectual responses to stimuli.

All taters were told to fully concentrate on the wine they were being asked to sample, so all 14 tasters were thinking and showed activity in the amygdala, 'a part of the brain that reacts to pleasure,' said Hagberg.

In the seven sommeliers' brains, however, activity (was) seen in the frontal cortices, an area used for analytical thinking. No such activity was seen in the other seven tasters."

Anybody want to touch that one with a ten foot pole?