Most of our taste buds are actually in the part of the tongue that food only reaches after swallowing.
I’d hazard a guess that this is also where most of the positive reinforcement circuitry eventually happens, but that might be inferring too much based on what I know. I wish I had a psychoanatomy textbook handy. It might also be that the negative reinforcement circuitry happens mostly on the pre-swallow taste buds, which would handily explain your temporary aversion to chocolate -and- the “taste test” phenomenon wherein humans taste something once and, prior to swallowing, proclaim a permanent dislike of that flavor.
A caution: anyone who reads this comment should not take either J_Thomas’s hypothesis or mine as actual evidence. I provided one to illustrate just how reasonable the exact opposite of what he said sounded, i.e., that nothing about digestion provides reinforcement.
Most of our taste buds are actually in the part of the tongue that food only reaches after swallowing.
I’d hazard a guess that this is also where most of the positive reinforcement circuitry eventually happens, but that might be inferring too much based on what I know. I wish I had a psychoanatomy textbook handy. It might also be that the negative reinforcement circuitry happens mostly on the pre-swallow taste buds, which would handily explain your temporary aversion to chocolate -and- the “taste test” phenomenon wherein humans taste something once and, prior to swallowing, proclaim a permanent dislike of that flavor.
A caution: anyone who reads this comment should not take either J_Thomas’s hypothesis or mine as actual evidence. I provided one to illustrate just how reasonable the exact opposite of what he said sounded, i.e., that nothing about digestion provides reinforcement.