The Face as Gateway of Chemical Senses: Cognitive. Aspects of the Taste Experience.

Our face is not only the mirror of our mind, of our mood, of our character, the gateway of verbal language (voice and hearing) and of our airways, but it is also the access of all forms of sense knowledge of the external world and of our interaction with it on various levels. Starting from this premise, this essay focuses on the sensory mechanisms enabling the chemical knowledge of the world, i.e., on the sense of smell, taste and the trigeminal system (responsible for the so-called «face sensations»), in order to understand their role in the complex cognitive activity of the perception of flavour.