What happens in the head of a wine expert?

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What happens in the head of a wine expert? An fMRI study on the influence of sommeliers’ expertise on the integration of flavor provides tried to answer this question. In fact, this study describes the differences in brain activity of sommeliers compared to “naive” subjects during a blind taste test of wine samples as stimuli relative to water, in order to confirm the influence of expertise on the integration of flavor. These results confirm that wine experts work simultaneously on sensory quality assessment and on label recognition of wine. To improve the understanding of the effect of expertise on wine flavor integration, further studies should take into account the three phases of wine tasting, and neuroimaging protocol design should integrate the sight of the wine, then orthonasal stimulation and finally in-mouth sensations.

The findings of the report are very interesting :
1) Expertise impacts basic taste processing, and when comparing expert minus control, during the taste phase, early sensorial and hedonic structures and familiarity structures are activated suggesting early analysis of the stimulus. Interestingly, brain stem responses have been observed in experts during this taste phase.
2) During the after-taste phase, the experts showed greater activation in the left orbitofrontal cortex, left insular cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The leftward specialization occurs at the expense of normal rightward activity.
3) This study also revealed more involvement in experts of hippocampal, parahippocampal, anterior temporal regions and associative occipital area associated with different types of memory, suggesting that wine experts probably process by similitude to try to recognize all characteristics (country origin, cepage, “appellation,” millesime) of the wine, and further analyses such as Dynamic Causal Modeling or Granger Causality Analysis are needed to deeply understand the chronological functioning of brain networks of wine experts.
4) More generally, their results indicate that wine experts showed a more immediate and targeted sensory reaction to wine stimulation than control subjects. The influence of expertise on flavor integration may mainly comprise quicker sensorial integration with an economic mechanism reducing effort and increasing efficacy. Experts seem to also activate sensory memory and episodic memory as well as working memory and semantic memory.

Download the report to find out more on this study.

(*Since 2003, VitaBella Luxury Wine has been advising more than 200 prestigious wine estates for their international communication strategy incl. Chapoutier, Hugel, Dr Loosen, Famille Perrin, Cos d’Estournel, Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie’s Miraval…Write to info@vitabella.fr)