Key Points
- Associate Professor of Biological Science and Neuroscience Roberto Vincis will study the impact of temperature on how people process salty tastes with funding from the National Institutes of Health.
- By studying how the temperature of a food or drink affects the way the brain processes the taste of table salt and salt substitutes, Vincis and his team hope to uncover overlooked factors that shape what we eat and ultimately our health.
A Florida State University neuroscientist has received a new grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate how a food or drink's temperature affects the way our brains process the taste of salt, a neural mechanism that plays a significant role in shaping eating behaviors and nutrition habits.
Associate Professor of Biological Science and Neuroscience Roberto Vincis will use the $2.5 million in funding from the NIH's National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to research temperature's impact on salt taste processing through his project, "Thermal Influences on Salt Taste Sensitivity and Neural Processing."
"Temperature strongly shapes what we choose to eat, yet we know surprisingly little about how it affects the way the brain processes taste," Vincis said. "When we eat or drink, three senses work together: taste, smell and touch, which includes texture and temperature. Combined, they create what we experience as flavor."
Flavor guides what we choose to eat and drink, and those choices have lasting effects on health. Salt plays a bigger role. Beyond tasting salty, it changes how a food tastes, most notably by masking bitterness. Reducing excess salt in the American diet is a major public health priority. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, about 90 percent of Americans consume more sodium than recommended.
"Most previous studies looked at one component of flavor at a time, but in order to fully understand how the brain processes taste, we need to see components like temperature and salt interact," Vincis said. "I believe few labs in the U.S. study oral sensory components simultaneously. The NIH is supporting nutrition-related research from many angles, and this grant tells us we are on the right track to better understanding what drives nutrition habits and shapes eating behaviors."
Table salt is necessary in small amounts, but too much can lead to high blood pressure and a higher risk for heart disease and stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Together, heart disease and stroke kill more Americans each year than any other cause.
"By uncovering how multiple sensory systems interact to drive unhealthy dietary preferences, this research could also help to identify novel biological targets for treating obesity and eating disorders," said Lisa Eckel, director of FSU's Program in Neuroscience.
When we eat, chemicals in foods and drinks activate taste cells in the mouth, and these cells pass the signal to nerves that carry it to the brain. This information eventually reaches the primary gustatory cortex, a region deep in the brain's insular region where the brain makes sense of what we are tasting.
By studying how the temperature of a food or drink affects the way the brain processes the taste of table salt and salt substitutes, Vincis and his team hope to uncover overlooked factors that shape what we eat and ultimately our health.
"We'll combine hypothesis-driven behavioral experiments, recordings of brain activity, and targeted manipulation of specific brain circuits to examine how stimulus temperature changes the way the brain responds to salt," Vincis said. "What we learn could help develop strategies to reduce excess salt consumption in the diet."
Since joining FSU's faculty in 2018, Vincis and the Vincis Lab have been continually supported by national funding in the investigation of processes underlying neural processing of sensory experiences. In 2022, he was awarded a five-year, $1.8M NIH grant to understand how interactions among various brain regions contribute to the sense of taste, and he received the 2026 Ajinomoto Award for Young Investigators in Gustation from the Association for Chemoreception Sciences.
Vincis' research also contributes to FSU's Institute for Connecting Nutrition and Health, which aims to create and catalyze high-impact multidisciplinary collaborative nutrition research and training to improve human health. Additionally, his work supports FSU Health, an academic health system combining the expertise of hospitals, physicians, clinics, research, education and innovation to improve the health of our community.
"The study of chemical senses has long been a hallmark of excellence within the FSU Program in Neuroscience, and this new grant award further elevates the stature of this distinguished community of scientists," Eckel said. "It also highlights the broad impact of Dr. Vincis' research and his growing national and international reputation as a leading scholar in the field."
To learn more about neuroscience and biological science research at FSU, visit neuro.fsu.edu and bio.fsu.edu.
