科学美国人60秒 你的大脑不用舌头也能品尝味道（在线收听）

Back in ancient times, philosophers like Aristotle were already speculating about the origins of taste, and how the tongue sensed elemental tastes like sweet, bitter, salty and sour. "What we discovered just a few years ago is that there are regions of the brain—regions of the cortex—where particular fields of neurons represent these different tastes again, so there's a sweet field, a bitter field, a salty field, etcetera." Nick Ryba, a sensory neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health

在古代的时候，亚里士多德等思想家曾经猜测味道的起源，以及舌头如何感知到酸、甜、苦、咸、辣等味道。“就在几年以前，我们曾经讨论大脑区域——大脑皮层——特定领域的神经元代表着不同的味道吗，这样，就会有负责甜味的区域、苦味的区域、咸味的区域等等。”尼克·里巴美国国立卫生研究院的感官神经科学家，讲述了上述言论。

Ryba and his colleagues found that you can actually taste without a tongue at all, simply by stimulating the "taste" part of the brain—the insular cortex. They ran the experiment in mice with a special sort of brain implant—a fiber-optic cable that turns neurons on with a pulse of laser light. And by switching on the "bitter" sensing part of the brain, they were able to make mice pucker up, as if they were tasting something bitter—even though absolutely nothing bitter was touching the tongues of the mice.

里巴和他的同事研究发现，实际上，即使没有舌头，你也可是尝出味道，而这仅需要通过刺激大脑中的“味觉”部分——岛叶皮层即可。他们在老鼠身上做了实验，老鼠植入了特殊的大脑结构——光纤电缆，通过激光束，此光纤电缆可以“刺激”神经元。研究人员通过刺激大脑中的“苦味”感官部分，而使老鼠脾气暴躁，仿佛老鼠品尝到了苦味的东西——而老鼠没有尝到任何苦的东西。

In another experiment, the researchers fed the mice a bitter flavoring on their tongues—but then made it more palatable by switching on the "sweet" zone of the brain. "What we were doing here was adding the sweetness, but only adding it in the brain, not in what we were giving to the mouse." Think adding sugar to your coffee—but doing it only in your mind. The findings appear in the journal Nature.

在另外一个实验里，研究人员老鼠吃苦味的东西——但是研究人员又刺激老鼠大脑中的“甜味”区，而让苦味变得更加的可口。“我们做的是增加甜蜜，但仅仅是通过刺激老鼠大脑中的甜味区域，而不是喂老鼠吃填的东西。”想想在咖啡里面加糖——而这次仅仅是在大脑里面加糖。该研究结果发表在《自然》杂志上。

Ryba says the study suggests that a lot of our basic judgments about taste—sweet means good, bitter means bad—are actually hard-wired at the level of the brain. As for that virtual-sugar-in-your-coffee idea? "I think it's basically science fiction to think that this would be something that would be applied to humans." But today’s science fiction might be tomorrow’s artificial sweetener.

里巴称研究表明，我们关于味道的许多基本的判断——甜味意味着好，苦涩意味着坏，这实际上都是与大脑相关的。至于把那个在脑海中给咖啡加糖的想法?我认为，这是科幻小说的观点，认为将来这将会适用于人类。但是今天的科幻小说，可能是未来人类虚拟的甜味剂。