Drinking wine engages more of our brains than solving maths problems, apparently
While drinking a glass of Pinot and sinking into your sofa might feel like the world’s most lazy activity, doing so might be more productive than you’d think.
Apparently, drinking wine is actually an excellent workout for your brain, and engages more parts of our grey matter than other human behaviour.
According to The Independent, a leading neuroscientist from the Yale School of Medicine has said sniffing and studying a wine before we drink it requires “exquisite control of one of the biggest muscles in the body”.
Dr Gordon Shepherd says that when you swirl the drink around your mouth, those muscles and taste receptors go to work which engages the brain more than listening to music or solving difficult maths problems.
Dr Shepherd, who’s spent years studying how the human brain processes flavour, says his findings show that taste is more subjective than previously thought and is “heavily dependent on our own memories and emotions and those of our companions”.
Age, gender and even the composition of one’s saliva can also contribute.
In his new book Neuroenology: How The Brain Creates The Taste of Wine, he concludes: “The taste is not in the wine; the taste is created by the brain of the wine taster.”
And last but not least, while many of us might know it’s conventional to spit out wine during a tasting session, he says swallowing it is an essential part of the tasting process – just don’t take “too large a sip” to avoid saturating your system.
That last bit might be a bit tricky.
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