Tasty (26 page)

Notes

Chapter 1: The Tongue Map

 
1
 
eternal present was truly conscious
: S. S. Stevens, “Edwin Garrigues Boring: 1886–1968: Biographical Memoir,” National Academy of Sciences (1973).

 
1
 
a young woman's head
: Harvard University Department of Psychology website,
http://www.isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k3007&panel=icb.pagecontent44003%3Ar%241%3Fname%3Dhistoricprofs.html&pageid=icb.page19708&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent44003&view=view.do&viewParam_name=boring.html#a_icb_pagecontent44003
.

 
2
 
the differences were very small
: Edwin G. Boring,
Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology
(New York: Appleton-­Century-Crofts, Inc., 1942), 452.

 
3
 
small differences in perception appear huge
: Linda M. Bartoshuk, “The biological basis of food perception and acceptance,”
Food Quality and Preference
, no. 4 (1993): 21–32.

 
4
 
she found very limited variation
: Virginia B. Collings, “Human taste response as a function of locus of stimulation on the tongue and soft palate,”
Perception and Psychophysics
16, no. 1 (1973): 169–74.

 
4
 
all over the tongue
: Jayaram Chandrashekar, Mark A. Hoon, Nicholas J. P. Ryba, and Charles S. Zuker, “The receptors and cells for mammalian taste,”
Nature
444, no. 7117 (2006): 288–94, doi:10.1038/nature05401.

 
4
 
maintains the glass designs work
: Robert Simonson, “House of Glass: How Georg Riedel has changed the way we have a drink,”
Imbibe
(January/February 2009), https://imbibemagazine.com/Characters-Georg-Riedel.

 
5
 
“reach to the heart”
: Plato,
Timaeus,
trans. Benjamin Jowett, MIT Internet Classics Archive,
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html
.

 
6
 
more skeptical attitude that persisted
: Carolyn Korsmeyer,
Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 26; Korsmeyer, “Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting,”
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
60, no. 3 (2009): 217–25; Korsmeyer, “Disputing taste,”
TPM
(2nd quarter 2009): 70–76. Korsmeyer's work provides an excellent exploration of this topic.

 
7
 
iron key on a leather thong
: Miguel de Cervantes,
Don Quixote,
trans. Edith Grossman (New York: HarperCollins, Kindle Edition, 2009), Kindle location 11884.

 
8
 
explained the irritation they caused
:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
, s.v. Alcmaeon,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/alcmaeon/
; Democritus: Stanley Finger,
Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations into Brain Function
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), 165.

 
8
 
phlegm (earth and water)
: Birgit Heyn,
Ayurveda: The Indian Art of Natural Medicine and Life Extension
(Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 1990), 91–93.

 
8
 
insipid,
aqueous, and nauseous
: Finger,
Origins of Neuroscience
, 166.

 
10
 
later won a Nobel Prize
: Nobel Prize website,
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2004/
.

 
11
 
a hundred thousand times less sensitive
: Nicholas Ryba, interview.

 
12
 
half of a rodent gene for a sweet receptor
: Mark A. Hoon, Elliot Adler, Jurgen Lindemeier, James F. Battey, Nicholas J. P. Ryba, and Charles S. Zuker, “Putative mammalian taste receptors: a class of taste-specific GPCRs with distinct topographic selectivity,”
Cell
96 (1999): 541–51.

 
13
 
such as imagination and emotion
: Mbemba Jabbi, Marte Swart, and Christian Keysers, “Empathy for positive and negative emotions in the gustatory cortex,”
NeuroImage
34, no. 4 (2007): 1744–53, doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.10.032; Mbemba Jabbi, Jojanneke Bastiaansen, Christian Keysers, “A common anterior insula representation of disgust observation, experience, and imagination shows divergent functional connectivity pathways,”
PloS One
3, no. 8 (2008): e2939, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002939.

 
15
 
carrot-flavored cereal
: Julie A. Mennella, Coren P. Jagnow, and Gary K. Beauchamp, “Prenatal and postnatal flavor learning by human infants,”
Pediatrics
107, no. 6 (2001): e88, doi:10.1542/peds.107.6.e88.

 
15
 
probing, adventurous periods
: Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia K. Kuhl,
The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind
(New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 186.

Chapter 2: The Birth of Flavor in Five Meals

 
19
 
fossil of a predator eating its prey
: Mark A. S. McMenamin, “Origin and Early Evolution of Predators: The Ecotone Model and Early Evidence for Macropredation,” in
Predator-Prey Interactions in the Fossil Record,
eds. Patricia H. Kelley, Michal Kowalewski, and Thor A. Hansen (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2003), 379–98.

 
20
 
to kill, and to feed
: University of California Museum of Paleontology website,
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cambrian/camblife.html
.

 
21
 
450 million years ago
: Robert M. Dores, “Hagfish, genome duplications, and RFamide neuropeptide evolution,”
Endocrinology
152, no. 11 (2011): 4010–13, doi:10.1210/en.2011-1694.

 
23
 
the brain's basic structure
: John Morgan Allman,
Evolving Brains
(New York: Scientific American Library, 2000), 76. Allman's book provides an excellent exploration of the evolution of the brain over the entire history of life; Helmut Wicht and R. Glenn Northcutt, “Telencephalic connections in the Pacific Hagfish (
Eptatretus stouti
), with special reference to the thalamopallial system,”
The Journal of Comparative Neurology
260 (1998): 245–60; R. Glenn Northcutt, “Understanding vertebrate brain evolution,”
Integrative and Comparative Biology
42, no. 4 (2002): 743–56, doi:10.1093/icb/42.4.743.

 
24
 
250 million years earlier
: Seth D. Burgessa, Samuel Bowringa, and Shu-zhong Shen, “High-precision timeline for Earth's most severe extinction,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
111, no. 9 (2014): 3316–21, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1317692111.

 
26
 
three-dimensional images of meteorites
: High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility at the University of Texas at Austin website,
http://www.ctlab.geo.utexas.edu/
.

 
27
 
more quickly and gracefully than its predecessors
: Timothy B. Rowe, Thomas E. Macrini, and Zhe-Xi Luo, “Fossil evidence on origin of the mammalian brain,”
Science
332, no. 6032 (2011): 955–57, doi:10.1126/science.1203117.

 
29
 
occurred in a species of monkey
: Yoav Gilad, Victor Wiebe, Molly Przeworski, Doron Lancet, Svante Pääbo, “Loss of olfactory receptor genes coincides with the acquisition of full trichromatic vision in primates,”
PLoS Biology
2, no. 1 (2004): E5, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020005.

 
29
 
the fruit-vision hypothesis
: B. C. Regan, C. Julliot, B. Simmen, F. Viénot, P. Charles-Dominique, and J. D. Mollon, “Frugivory and colour vision in
Alouatta seniculus
, a trichromatic platyrrhine monkey,”
Vision Research
38 (1998): 3321–27; B. C. Regan, C. Julliot, B. Simmen, F. Viénot, P. Charles-Dominique, and J. D. Mollon, “Fruits, foliage and the evolution of primate colour vision,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
356, no. 1407 (2001): 229–83, doi:10.1098/rstb.2000.0773.

 
30
 
in some primates
: N. J. Dominy, J. C. Svenning, and W. H. Li, “Historical contingency in the evolution of primate color vision,”
Journal of Human Evolution
44, no. 1 (2003): 25–45, doi:10.1016/S0047-2484(02)00167-7.

 
31
 
most other birds, respectively
: Allman,
Evolving Brains
, 176.

 
31
 
eyes pointing in all directions
: Ibid., 128.

 
31
 
nerve centers for making faces
: Seth D. Dobson and Chet C. Sherwood, “Correlated evolution of brain regions involved in producing and processing facial expressions in anthropoid primates,”
Biology Letters
7, no. 1 (2011): 86–88, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2010.0427.

 
32
 
result of a random wildfire
: Naama Goren-Inbar, Nira Alperson, Mordechai E. Kislev, Orit Simchoni, Yoel Melamed, Adi Ben-Nun, and Ella Werker, “Evidence of hominin control of fire at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel,”
Science
304, no. 5671 (2004): 725–27, doi:10.1126/science.1095443.

 
33
 
deer, elephants, and other animals
: Nira Alperson-Afil, Gonen Sharon, Mordechai Kislev, Yoel Melamed, Irit Zohar, Shosh Ashkenazi, Rivka Rabinovich, Rebecca Biton, Ella Werker, Gideon Hartman, Craig Feibel, and Naama Goren-Inbar, “Spatial organization of hominin activities at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel,”
Science
326 (2009): 1677–79, doi:10.1126/science.1180695.

 
35
 
“Dad, I found a fossil!”
: Celia W. Dugger and John Noble Wilford, “New Hominid Species Discovered in South Africa,”
New York Times
, April 8, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/science/09fossil.html
.

 
36
 
nearly perfectly preserved teeth
: Amanda G. Henry, Peter S. Ungar, Benjamin H. Passey, Matt Sponheimer, Lloyd Rossouw, Marion Bamford, Paul Sandberg, Darryl J. de Ruiter, and Lee Berger, “The diet of
Australopithecus sediba
,”
Nature
487 (2012): 90–93, doi:10.1038/nature11185.

 
38
 
weaker, finer muscles
: Hansell H. Stedman, Benjamin W. Kozyak, Anthony Nelson, Danielle M. Thesier, Leonard T. Su, David W. Low, Charles R. Bridges, Joseph B. Shrager, Nancy Minugh-­Purvis, and Marilyn A. Mitchell, “Myosin gene mutation correlates with anatomical changes in the human lineage,”
Nature
428, no. 6981 (2004): 415–18, doi:10.1038/nature02358.

 
38
 
only a tenth
: William R. Leonard, J. Josh Snodgrass, and Marcia L. Robertson, “Effects of brain evolution on human nutrition and metabolism,”
Annual Review of Nutrition
27 (April 2007): 311–27, doi:10.1146/annurev.nutr.27.061406.093659.

 
38
 
used for chopping and scraping
: Peter S. Ungar, Frederick E. Grine, and Mark F. Teaford, “Diet in early
Homo
: A review of the evidence and a new model of adaptive versatility,”
Annual Review of Anthropology
35, no. 1 (2006): 209–28, doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123153.

 
39
 
observations of savanna chimps
: Jill Pruetz, “Brief communication: Reaction to fire by savanna chimpanzees (
Pan troglodytes verus
) at Fongoli, Senegal; Conceptualization of ‘fire behavior' and the case for a chimpanzee model,”
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
141, no. 4 (2010): 646–50, doi: 10.1002/ajpa.21245. Pruetz, interview.

 
40
 
to cook hamburgers
: E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin,
Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind
(New York: John Wiley, 1994), 142.

 
41
 
none to do anything else
: Karina Fonseca-Azevedo and Suzana Herculano-­Houzel, “Metabolic constraint imposes tradeoff between body size and number of brain neurons in human evolution,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
109, no. 45 (2012): 18571–76, doi:10.1073/pnas.1206390109.

 
41
 
large burst of growth
: Richard Wrangham,
Catching Fire: How Cook
ing Made Us Human
(New York: Basic Books, Kindle Edition, 2009), Kindle location 888.

 
42
 
flavor came alive
: Daniel E. Lieberman,
The Evolution of the Human Head
(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 399–409. For an excellent discussion of this topic, see also Gordon M. Shepherd,
Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), chapter 26.

 
44
 
the size of the neocortex did
: Allman,
Evolving Brains
, 173; R. I. M. Dunbar and Suzanne Shultz, “Evolution in the social brain,”
Science
317 (2007): 1344–47, doi:10.1126/science .1145463.

 
44
 
environments are always changing
: Richard Potts, interview; Richard Potts, “Evolution and environmental change in early human prehistory,”
Annual Review of Anthropology
41 (June 2012): 151–68, doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145754; Richard Potts, “Hominin evolution in settings of strong environmental variability,”
Quaternary Science Reviews
73 (2013): 1–13, doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.04.003; Richard Potts, “Environmental hypotheses of hominin evolution,”
Yearbook of Physical Anthropology
41 (1998): 93–136.