Making sense of your senses

Hi again, Kids Talk Science fans!

Here's a question for you. Can you trust your sense of smell? What about your taste? If you are offered an apple pie that looks like apple pie and tastes like apple pie, can you be sure it's an apple pie?

I will say no, and all the kids who were here for our class on senses would agree!

Because they did have a non-apple apple pie, baked by Meredith, that tricked every single one of them. There was nothing strange in that pie, except that it didn't have apples.

Here's the homemade non-apple apple pie:

And here's a happy kid eating the homemade non-apple apple pie!

Our class was all about the senses and how it is not our nose that smells or our taste buds that taste but it's actually our brain that does the job by processing all the information it receives from our taste buds and odor receptors!

Surprised?

In addition to enjoying the tricky pie, we worked at the lollipop juice lab...

we observed each others' taste buds...

we chew a jelly bean while holding our noses closed and then let go (if you have never tried it, do it now!) ...

And we also discovered who of us are supertasters using supertasters strips (they taste yucky!)

We had a blast!

And now, KTS budding neuroscientists, answer the questions below for a chance to be Graciela's assistant on the first screenwriting class or to walk Sprout for two full blocks on our way from PS84 to KTS. (Oops, looks like a giraffe is eating our apple pie!)

Write your answer in the comments box below and don't forget to tell us who you are.

Questions:

What would happen if a person has an injury in an area of the brain that processes smell information? Imagine that the smell receptors in his nose don't get injured and continue functioning well.

1) Would he be able to smell at all?

2) Would food taste the same as before the injury?

Stay tuned for more!