A National Institutes of Health-funded study conducted by Christian H. Lemon, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Biology in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, aims to better understand how the brain processes taste and how those neural connections might change.

Taste is associated with a variety of brain functions, including the pleasure of tasting something sweet. Taste is a component of flavour, and it includes the pain felt while tasting a hot pepper. There is, however, a knowledge deficit on how taste and flavour preferences develop and alter through time.