Anticipating pleasure or pain before tasting hot sauce appears to influence the brain's response to spicy flavors.
“It has a broader meaning than just spicy food,” he says. Yi Luo At East China Normal University, China. “Understanding how positive and negative expectations influence cognition can inform approaches in medicine, such as increasing the placebo effect in treatment.”
Luo and her colleagues recruited 47 volunteers to receive the squirts. Approximately half liked spicy food and half disliked it.
Source: www.newscientist.com