SSS 2008-01-15（在线收听）

This is Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber . This'll just take a minute.

You think we enjoy something based on its intrinsic qualities. Food should taste good because its molecules tickle our tongues. But it's much more complicated than that. For example, one study has shown that knowing the ingredients and name brand of a beer can increase the drinker's pleasure. What is going on in our brains that allows that to happen? Researchers at the California Institute of Technology recently investigated our neural response to this non-intrinsic stimuli. 20 subjects tasted what they thought were five different wines. They were given the price for each. But in reality, there were only 3 wines. 2 were offered twice, once at an alleged low price and once at a much higher price and the subjects consistently said they enjoyed what they thought were expensive wines more. A functional MRI showed that there was no change in activity in the taste center of the brain when the subjects drink what they thought were costly wines, but the MRI also reviewed increased activity in the brain's pleasure centers. So somehow our brains combine both the actual taste and what we expected about the taste. In this case, that'll be better because it is pricier. In vivo veritas!(此处为拉丁语)

Thanks for the minute for Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber