Nutritional Assessment with Manual Muscle Testing

The human brain's Gustatory Motor System can be thought of as containing 2 stages.

The first stage is the sensory systems that feed into it (sense of smell, state of awareness, autonomic status, salivary state, etc.). These transform the individual gustatory sensory representations into the combined sense of flavor.

 

 

The second stage (which is measured in AK) is the action systems that draw on the full capacity of the human brain systems that generate and control our behavior.

The image here gives a better impression of the extensive amount of the human brain devoted to gustatory interpretation and creation of "flavor" and "taste". The true extent of the gustatory action system is revealed in the network of regions and connections that reflects the power of gustatory stimulation upon the brain.

 

The descending motor system that controls our muscles and glands begins at the highest level in the motor strip of the cerebral cortex. Just as there is a sensory homunculus representing the body surface -- with large areas devoted to the lips and tongue -- there is a corresponding motor homunculus with a similar enlargement of the lips and tongue -- THIS is where nutritional challenge occurs in the functional neurology approach of AK. It represents the larger numbers of cortical microcircuits devoted to receiving the sensory inputs and controlling the fine movements of the lips and tongue when we eat and drink.

 

 

Humans have a much more highly developed sense of flavor and taste because of the complex processing that occurs in the large human brain. A common misconception is that foods and nutrients contain flavors. Foods do contain the flavor molecules, but the flavors of those molecules are actually created by our brains after they are perceived by the gustatory and olfactory senses. The new science of neurogastronomy has described a uniquely human brain flavor system, one of the most extensive behavioral systems in the brain, creating perceptions, emotions, memories, consciousness, language, decisions, and motor programs, all centered on flavor.

 

 

 

The science of food and nutrition now begins in the brain, and shows not only how the brain receives the sensory stimuli of nutrition, but how in doing so the brain actively creates and responds to the sensation of flavor.

 

It should be recognized -- as Dr. Goodheart repeatedly pointed out -- that the only "pattern recognition device" for flavor and taste are the human organs of smell and taste, what we in AK call "olfactory" and "gustatory" challenge during AK nutritional testing.

 

 

Much more on the neurology of the manual muscle test as a diagnostic tool for nutritional disorders is in the new textbook:

 

 

Available Now at: https://www.thegangasaspress.com/