Experience Informs Consummatory Choices for Congruent and Incongruent Odor–Taste Mixtures in Rats

Abstract

Abstract Experience is an essential factor informing food choice. Eating food generates enduring odor–taste associations that link an odor with a taste’s quality and hedonic value (pleasantness/unpleasantness) and creates the perception of a congruent odor–taste combination. Previous human psychophysical experiments demonstrate that experience with odor–taste mixtures shapes perceptual judgments related to the intensity, familiarity, and pleasantness of chemosensory stimuli. However, how these perceptual judgments inform consummatory choice is less clear. Using rats as a model system and a 2-bottle brief-access task, we investigated how experience with palatable and unpalatable odor–taste mixtures influences consummatory choice related to odor–taste congruence and stimulus familiarity. We found that the association between an odor and a taste, not the odor’s identity or its congruence with a taste, informs consummatory choice for odor–taste mixtures. Furthermore, we showed that the association between an odor and a taste, not odor neophobia, informs consummatory choice for odors dissolved in water. Our results provide further evidence that the association between an odor and a taste, after odor–taste mixture experience, is a fundamental feature guiding consummatory choice.