Drinking red wine causes flurry of “brain exercise” as neurons work to analyze the experience

( Natural News ) A neurologist says drinking wine gives your brain a workout, stimulating more of the organ more than “any other human behavior” notes an article published in Daily Mail . Professor Gordon Shepherd from the Yale School of Medicine found that the brain undergoes a series of complex neurological processes to taste wine. Drinking wine, apparently, triggers a set of sensory and emotional reactions in the brain. “The taste is not in the wine,” Shepherd writes in his book, Neuroenology: How the brain creates the taste of wine . “The taste is created by the brain of the wine taster.” Red or white, either improves cognitive function Shepherd claims that the taste of wine is an illusion. Our brains pull in various memories and sensory perceptions surrounding food and drink to develop the taste of the wine. He coined the term “neurogastronomy” to describe this fascinating field of studying how the brain perceives flavor. So how exactly does it work? Shepherd says that the movement of the wine through the mouth and alcohol-infused air through the nose forces the brain to conjure up a flavor. The most important aspect of this “creation” or “brain activation” process is when we breathe out wine-infused air after we take a sniff. Wine flavor is perceived similarly to how the brain sees color, except is “colored” (pun intended) by the drinker’s emotional connection to the wine in their glass. The taste is “heavily dependent on our memories and emotions and those of our companions,” notes Shepherd. He goes on to add in an interview with National Public Radio in the U.S., “The molecules in wine don’t have taste or flavor, but when they stimulate our brains, the brain creates flavor the same way it creates color.” Shepherd says sniffing wine […]

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