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🎁 中英文稿：
Back in ancient times, philosophers like Aristotle were already speculating about the origins of taste, and how the tongue sensed elemental tastes like sweet, bitter, salty and sour. "What we discovered just a few years ago is that there are regions of the brain—regions of the cortex—where particular fields of neurons represent these different tastes again, so there's a sweet field, a bitter field, a salty field, etcetera." Nick Ryba, a sensory neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health
在古代的時候，亞里斯多德等思想家曾經猜測味道的起源，以及舌頭如何感知到酸、甜、苦、鹹、辣等味道。“就在幾年以前，我們曾經討論大腦區域——大腦皮層——特定領域的神經元代表著不同的味道嗎，這樣，就會有負責甜味的區域、苦味的區域、鹹味的區域等等。”美國國立衛生研究院的感官神經科學家尼克•里巴，講述了上述言論。
Ryba and his colleagues found that you can actually taste without a tongue at all, simply by stimulating the "taste" part of the brain—the insular cortex. They ran the experiment in mice with a special sort of brain implant—a fiber-optic cable that turns neurons on with a pulse of laser light. And by switching on the "bitter" sensing part of the brain, they were able to make mice pucker up, as if they were tasting something bitter—even though absolutely nothing bitter was touching the tongues of the mice.
里巴和他的同事研究發現，實際上，即使沒有舌頭，你也可是嚐出味道，而這僅需要通過刺激大腦中的“味覺”部分——島葉皮層即可。他們在老鼠身上做了實驗，老鼠植入了特殊的大腦結構——光纖電纜，通過雷射光束，此光纖電纜可以“刺激”神經元。研究人員通過刺激大腦中的“苦味”感官部分，而使老鼠脾氣暴躁，彷彿老鼠品嚐到了苦味的東西——而老鼠沒有嚐到任何苦的東西。
In another experiment, the researchers fed the mice a bitter flavoring on their tongues—but then made it more palatable by switching on the "sweet" zone of the brain. "What we were doing here was adding the sweetness, but only adding it in the brain, not in what we were giving to the mouse." Think adding sugar to your coffee—but doing it only in your mind. The findings appear in the journal Nature.
在另外一個實驗裡，研究人員老鼠吃苦味的東西——但是研究人員又刺激老鼠大腦中的“甜味”區，而讓苦味變得更加的可口。“我們做的是增加甜蜜，但僅僅是通過刺激老鼠大腦中的甜味區域，而不是餵老鼠吃填的東西。”想想在咖啡裡面加糖——而這次僅僅是在大腦裡面加糖。該研究結果發表在《自然》雜誌上。
Ryba says the study suggests that a lot of our basic judgments about taste—sweet means good, bitter means bad—are actually hard-wired at the level of the brain. As for that virtual-sugar-in-your-coffee idea? "I think it's basically science fiction to think that this would be something that would be applied to humans." But today’s science fiction might be tomorrow’s artificial sweetener.
里巴稱研究表明，我們關於味道的許多基本的判斷——甜味意味著好，苦澀意味著壞，這實際上都是與大腦相關的。至於把那個在腦海中給咖啡加糖的想法？我認為，這是科幻小說的觀點，認為將來這將會適用於人類。但是今天的科幻小說，可能是未來人類虛擬的甜味劑。
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