Decline in Taste and Odor Discrimination Abilities with Age, and Relationship between Gustation and Olfaction

Abstract

It is important to learn about changes in both taste and odor perceptions with increasing age, because the taste of foods we encounter in our daily life is strongly affected by their smell. This study discusses the difference in qualitative taste and odor discrimination between the elderly and the young. Tastants and odorants used in this study were presented not as single stimuli but as a taste mixture (sucrose and tartaric acid) and an odor mixture (beta-phenylethyl alcohol and gamma-undecalactone). The results showed that quality discrimination abilities of the elderly subjects for both taste and odor were significantly lower than those of the young subjects, indicating a decline in quality discrimination abilities related to age. Also, a moderate but significant correlation was observed between the taste discrimination ability and the odor discrimination ability. We measured thresholds for single-taste and odor components in mixtures and compared them between the elderly and the young to investigate the cause for these findings.

Identification of odors of edible and nonedible stimuli as affected by age and gender

“…The causes of this decline are not completely understood, although it has been attributed to anatomical changes in some peripheral olfactory structures, such as a decrease in the number of receptors that converge in the olfactory bulb, in mitral cells, and in central olfactory areas such as the temporal lobe, the entorhinal cortex, the hippocampus, and the amygdala (Cowell et al, 1994;Kaneda et al, 2000;Price, Davis, Morris, & White, 1991). Previous research has shown that olfactory performance depends highly on the task used to assess odor performance.…”

“…Most studies on odor identification have used a rather small set of stimuli, ranging from 2 to 16 odors (Finkel, Pedersen, & Larsson, 2001;Kaneda et al, 2000;Larsson et al, 2004;Nordin, Nyroos, Maunuksela, Niskanen, & Identification of odors of edible and nonedible stimuli as affected by age and gender…”

Olfactory Function: The Influence of Demographic, Cognitive, and Genetic factors

“…Similarly, young outperform old adults in odor quality discrimination (Hummel et al, 1998;Kaneda et al, 2000;Schemper, Voss, & Cain, 1981). In a study by de age was negatively correlated with both odor discrimination and odor identification performance.…”

“…Odor thresholds increase with aging (Kaneda et al, 2000;Larsson et al, 2000;Murphy, Nordin, de Wijk, Cain, & Polich, 1994;Stevens & Cain, 1987), although a loss in odor sensitivity may not always a feature in aging. For example, Nordin, Almkvist, and Berglund (2012) demonstrated that a subgroup of older subjects without any medical, health or cognitive deficits (i.e.…”

Yaşlılık ve sağlıklı beslenme

“…65 yaş üzerinde kişilerin yaklaşık olarak %25'inde, 4 temel tad duyusunun (tatlı, ekşi, tuzlu, acı) bir veya birden fazlasında azalma vardır. Bunun nedeni; dil tad papillarındaki sayı ve fonksiyonel azalmadır (9). Beslenmenin özendirilme-sinde, koku ve tad almanın iletilmesinin önemi büyüktür.…”