The 'hypothesis'

A whole new world..

Remember playing Operation? I loved that game. You used a pair of forceps, essentially just tweezers to try and extract all these weird little objects from the “patient.” The game featured several narrow openings scattered across the body, and it was difficult. You needed serious dexterity and a steady, almost artistic touch to maneuver the tweezers. If you accidentally grazed the metal edge of the opening, a red light would flash, a loud buzzer would go off, and you’d lose your turn. I also remember a newer version where, in addition to the red light and buzzer, the entire body would actually shake when you messed up, lol.

This game reminds me of chemesthesis, essentially illustrating the interaction between afferent and efferent pathways. We have sensory receptors distributed throughout the entire body, which allow us to perceive sensations during every “operation”.

For example, when I press down on my palm:

• Stimulus: The pressure creates a sensation by activating receptors.

• Afferent Pathway: This sensory information (e.g., ‘this feels like burning pressure’) is sent to the brain.

• Efferent Pathway: The brain registers the sensation and sends a motor message back to the area, allowing me to consciously realize that pressing too hard causes discomfort.

This feedback loop is the same mechanism that allows us to perceive “heat” from spicy foods, where chemical triggers activate those same sensory pathways.

We already recognize cations as the gatekeepers of flavor, but there’s a major rift regarding spicy. The scientific community generally dismisses the ‘spicy’ sensation to chemesthetic trigger rather than a result of cation non-competition, but I’m about to blur that line. See, by looking at cross-modal sensory perception we can see that spicy compounds don’t just cause a burning sensation, they actually talk to our taste receptors. I’m arguing that spicy is a legitimate tastant because of how it competes with and changes our perception of actual flavors.

We accept Tas2R as a bitter receptor and TRPA1 as an astringent one, so why deny a dedicated receptor for spicy? I contend that a spicy-specific taste receptor must exist, distinct from the TRPV1 (chemesthesis) pathway.

The transition from afferent signaling (sensory input) to efferent motor response (the physical feeling) depends entirely on taste thresholds. At lower levels, like Level 1 Kung Pao Chicken, the tastant is registered without triggering a burn. It is only when this threshold is breached as with Level 3 Inferno chips, that the taste receptors become saturated and the TRPV1 ‘pain’ response is triggered. This delay proves that the taste of spicy exists independently of the physical pain it eventually causes.

Ok, so now that we have my hypothesis established, let’s get back to the sundubu jjigae and test it.