Multisensory processes in flavour perception and their influence on food choice

• Flavours are combinations of distinct sensory signals, primarily odours and tastes.
• These qualities are bound together via associative learning and synthetic attention.
• Binding has hedonic consequences, thus influencing consumer preferences/choices.

Although food flavours are composed of distinct sensory properties — odours and tastes primarily — there is ample evidence that these properties are not perceived independently. Interactions between flavour qualities can be seen as reflecting repeated joint experience with those qualities. As a consequence, odours take on the properties of tastes, both perceptual and hedonic. Understanding these processes provides insight into the ways in which consumers perceive flavours, namely as synthetic, hedonically valenced wholes that form the basis of food choice.