Eating is the most life-critical multisensory experience we encounter on a daily basis, but how exactly does the brain integrate and make sense of the different sensory inputs? In this study, we investigated how music influences the brain's encoding of taste and reward. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioural data were collected from 28 healthy participants. The fMRI session was divided into three blocks: taste only, music only, and taste+music combinations. In the scanner, participants received sweet (TSw, 138.1 g/L sucrose) and sour (TSo, 2.4 g/L citric acid) tastant solutions and listened to soundtracks composed to associate with sweetness (MSw) and sourness (MSo). In the subsequent behavioral session, participants repeated the taste/sound combinations while evaluating tastant pleasantness, intensity of sweetness/sourness, and sound-taste congruency on 9-point visual analog scales. In the baseline validation fMRI analysis of TSw and TSo, we found overlapping activation in areas related to taste (rolandic operculum - ROL, insula - INS), sensory processing (postcentral gyrus - PoCG) and pleasure (putamen). Comparing taste-only with music-only trials, we found overlapping activation in areas related to taste (ROL) and multisensory integration (precuneus) between MSw and Tsw. Similarly, for TSo and MSo, we found overlapping activation in both taste (ROL, insula) and auditory (Heschl’s gyrus) areas. Behavioural results supported the perception of congruence between matching tastes and sounds and incongruence between mismatched pairs.
This study provides novel insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the interaction between taste and music. These findings contribute to our understanding of multisensory integration and shed light on the potential impact of this interaction on real-life perceptual experiences.