Gastrophysics

Charles Spence

Professor Charles Spence has spent the last two decades researching how people perceive the world around them, earning him the international reputation as the expert in multisensory perception and experience design. He has popularized the term 'gastrophysics', and leads the field in this ground-breaking area of science that is rapidly transforming the way in which we all experience what we eat and drink. As head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University, Professor Spence studies how our brains process and integrate the information from each of our senses to form the extraordinarily rich multisensory experiences that fill our daily lives. He has consulted for many multinational companies, including Unilever, PepsiCo, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, P&G, Nestlé and Twinings, advising on various aspects of multisensory design, packaging, and branding, and has conducted research with a number of world-leading chefs, mixologists and baristas, including Heston Blumenthal and Ferran Adrià. He has been profiled in publications including the Guardian, the Financial Times and the New Yorker, interviewed on flagship news programmes across the media, is a regular on BBC Radio 4's The Kitchen Cabinet, and his research has been covered by publications from the Economist and the New Scientist to Glamour and In Style. In 2008 he was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for his ground-breaking work on the 'sonic crisp', demonstrating how a louder crunch makes a crisp seem fresher. His last book, The Perfect Meal (written together with Betina Piqueras-Fiszman), won the 2015 Popular Science Prose Award. This is his first trade book.