According to Gordon Shepherd, a neurologist working at the Yale School of Medicine, red wine might be a better brain exerciser than Sudoku or other typical brain teasers.
Research has shown that the brain works much harder when enjoying a glass of wine than it does during just about any other activity. That includes complex tasks like listening to music, solving equations, or writing.
Shepherd has recently released a new book entitled “Neuroenology: How The Brain Creates The Taste of Wine”, and in the book Shepherd details how drinking and smelling wine forces the entire brain to work together.
According to him, it requires complete control over one of the biggest tools humans have. Our brains don’t actually perceive the world as it is. Instead, they take the information and process it into a spectrum of variables that all come together to form awareness.
In the same way that colors don’t really exist, but instead are only different wavelengths of light perceived differently by the human brain, wine doesn’t actually have any flavor.
The brain must create the experience of tasting wine, and it does so by transferring sensory information into the final experience. Wine is one of the most stimulating consumables in society for many reasons.
It activates thousands of taste and smell receptors in the body, and those activations translate to enhanced taste and smell. With such a vast explosion of sensory input, the brain has no choice but to respond with its full force.
This is why every wine tastes slightly different to every person. The physical structure of the wine molecules might be the same, but the individual human response to them is highly varied.
