Anodal Electrical Stimulation Enhances the Perceived Piquancy Induced by Chili Peppers and Wasabi

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 10; pp. 134647 - 134654
• Main Authors: Ohno, Masaki, Aoyama, Kazuma, Amemiya, Tomohiro, Kuzuoka, Hideaki, Matsumoto, Keigo, Mine, Daisuke, Narumi, Takuji
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Cutlery; Eating; Electric taste; Electrical stimulation; Electrodes; galvanic taste stimulation; Health hazards; Nerve endings; Nerve fibers; Pain; Peppers; piquancy; spicy; Stimulation; taste display; the trigeminal nerve; Tongue
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3231729

Methods for enhancing perceived piquancy are expected to improve eating satisfaction and reduce health hazards such as reflux esophagitis caused by the excessive consumption of piquant ingredients. In this study, based on the differences in receptors, we classified the perceived piquancy into three types: HOT, MINTY, and SPICY. We particularly focused on the HOT sensation, which primarily contributes to the negative health effect of eating piquant foods. We proposed a novel method to enhance the intensity of piquancy by single-pole electrical stimulation. Our proposed method uses metal cutlery as an electrode to stimulate the part of the trigeminal nerve of the tongue related to piquancy. To evaluate whether the proposed method selectively enhances the HOT sensation, we conducted psychophysical experiments and demonstrated that <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{\mathrm {1.5~ \text {m} \text {A} }} </tex-math></inline-formula> anodal single-pole electrical stimulation enhanced the HOT sensation and the SPICY sensation induced by chili peppers or wasabi. To our knowledge, this is the first study to establish a method for enhancing the perceived piquancy using only electrical stimulation.