Szechuan peppercorns. They do not contain capsaicin, but produce a vanilloid drug that opens potassium leak channels in your mouth, preferentially in the fine touch afferents. When you eat szechuan spice these neurons misfire and tell your brain that you are sensing a rapid, fluttery (50Hz) vibration.
Also called Chinese prickly ash, these trees are not related to chili peppers or black pepper, but are instead very small citrus fruit. Fears over them introducing citrus blight led to a ban on imports to the US that was only overturned in 2005. Since then, people like me have been discovering how good they are in pasta sauce.












I’ll always remember chatting with a guy at the airport who asked what I was in grad school for. Unexpectedly, he was thrilled to talk about neuroscience, and asked what I thought of a recent study. Some researchers had put dogs in fMRI to “prove” that dogs can feel love.