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Wine More Engaging for the Brain than Maths | Neuroenology
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Forget Sudoku: Wine More Engaging for the Brain than Maths

Keeping your brain sharp with Sudoku is so 2012. If you want a good mind workout, tasting wine is one the most stimulating activities you can choose.

According to findings of Yale professor and neuroscientist Gordon Shepherd, all the process that leads to taste wine, from looking at the bottle and opening it to, of course, feeling its aromas and flavours, ends up offering more mental stimulation than listening to music or solving math problems.

“Wine drinking can be the ideal workout for your brain, engaging more parts of our grey matter than any other behaviour”, he said regarding his findings.

Shepherd, who coined the term “neurogastronomy” has studied the way the human brain creates flavours. The scientist offers further explanation in his book Neuroenology: How the Brain Creates the Taste of Wine. According to it, our brains process every stimulus from wine -such as appearance, smell and taste- in a way that involves a more complete use of the brain compared to activities that require the use of a specific type of knowledge, such as doing maths.

The fact that our brains have to “create” the flavours we discover in wine is one of the most fascinating ways in which our favourite drink can offer a complex intellectual challenge. He compares it to the way the brain works to create colour in our minds.

The professor points out that this property is lost when overindulging, as the taste becomes saturated and can’t appreciate the true taste of wine.

The book is available on Amazon

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