Wine tasting can make brain work more than math, neuroscience finds

According to Gordon Shepard, Professeur of neurosciences at Yale School of Medicine, the brain ramps it up when you’re actively engaged in tasting. It involves multiple sensory and motor systems, as well as central conceptual systems for cognition and memory — and systems for emotion and pleasure,” Shepherd says. So the brain becomes more engaged in wine tasting than it would, for example, be when it comes to solving a math problem or listening to music, which involve fewer body systems working together.