Sensory Analysis and Brain Imaging of Flavors and Fragrances

Flavors are a mixture of volatile and non-volatile organic compounds which bear pleasant odors and are extensively utilized in food and beverage industry. It is perceived to be the most multimodal sensory skill comprising not just oral somatosensory and gustatorial but also retro nasal olfactory signals. All sensory signals arising from food before consumption are also possibly influenced by prospects due to prior experience. Fragrance consists of volatile organic compounds which can be perceived through olfactory system utilizing odor-object encoding in peripheral and central processing stimuli in brain olfactory regions consisting of several active olfactory receptor genes, having diverse protein sequence. The physiological effects elicited by the sense of smell are intricately connected to flavor analysis of brain and impact its cognitive functions. In this chapter, we intend to discuss the mechanism of action of neurophysiological effects of these two interconnected senses, flavors and fragrances, its brain imaging and sensory analysis along with the future advancements in this area.