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CHI '26 · Honorable mention · full-paper review · confidence medium-high

Sensing and Modulating the Feel of a Drink: A Personalized Approach via Laryngeal Thermal Feedback

Mai Kamihori , Kouyou Otsu , Yuichi Itoh

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This is a genuinely interesting CHI paper because it turns the larynx into both a sensing site and an actuation site for drink sensation, then personalizes the intervention using a learned profile. The idea is unusual and well aligned with the evidence, though the mechanism is still indirect and the system is not yet closed-loop.

Axes Lens

Rare contribution shape, typical evidence profile. The point here is not a score. It is to show what kind of claim the paper makes, and whether the evidence pattern is unusual or baseline in this 268 -review set.

Review Summary

This paper stands out because it makes a surprisingly specific and coherent move: instead of treating drink sensation as something that can only be reported subjectively, it tries to model it from laryngeal thermal signals and then feed thermal stimulation back to the same anatomical site. That is a meaningful departure from more familiar peripheral thermal interaction work, which often uses the face, tongue, or other sites and frequently relies on predefined or event-triggered stimulation. The authors explicitly frame their contribution as moving beyond sensing for event detection toward computationally modeling subjective experience, and then using a SHAP-derived Interoceptive Profile to personalize the intervention. That combination gives the paper more than a novel hardware placement; it is a method-level contribution that links sensing, interpretation, and actuation in one pipeline. The validation is also reasonably convincing for a CHI paper: Study 1 learns profiles from laryngeal skin temperature and ingested volume, and Study 2 tests a wearable thermal feedback device in a controlled setting with multiple beverages and temperatures, showing that effects vary by beverage context and user profile. At the same time, the paper is careful enough to acknowledge important limits. The authors say the mechanisms remain unclear, the measurements are correlational, and skin temperature is only an indirect proxy for internal pharyngeal events. They also note that the current studies are not integrated into real-time closed-loop control, which matters if the long-term vision is adaptive sensory augmentation. So the strongest reading is not that the paper proves a general theory of drink perception, but that it establishes a plausible and well-motivated personalized interaction framework with promising empirical support. That makes the work notable, especially as an honorable-mention-level contribution, because it combines an unusual bodily site, a computational personalization strategy, and a controlled demonstration of perceptual modulation without overreaching beyond the evidence.

What Changed

Canon before

Prior CHI work on thermal and interoceptive interaction has often used peripheral sites and event-triggered or predefined stimulation, with sensing and actuation treated separately rather than as a personalized bidirectional loop.

Departure from common sense

The paper argues that the larynx is not just a passive anatomical site but a useful interaction locus for both sensing and modulation of drink sensation. That is a non-obvious move because the target experience is internal and subjective, yet the authors claim localized laryngeal thermal signals can be used to model it and then alter it.

Actual novelty

The paper’s novelty is the combination of computational modeling from laryngeal skin temperature plus ingested volume, the derivation of SHAP-based Interoceptive Profiles, and the use of those profiles to personalize laryngeal thermal feedback. The contribution is not only a new stimulus site, but a data-driven sensing-to-actuation pipeline for drink sensation.

Evidence

The paper presents two studies: Study 1 models subjective ratings from laryngeal skin temperature and ingested volume and identifies individual Interoceptive Profiles; Study 2 tests a wearable thermal feedback device on the larynx in a controlled lab setting and reports beverage- and profile-dependent effects on throat feeling, deliciousness, and comfort. The paper also explicitly states limitations around unclear mechanisms, correlational measurements, indirect proxy sensing, and lack of real-time closed-loop integration.

Limits

Method limits

Mechanisms remain unclear, and the authors state that their measurements are correlational rather than causal. Skin-surface temperature is an indirect proxy for pharyngeal thermal events, so the sensing model is not a direct physiological readout.

Deployment limits

The intervention is limited to thermal stimuli delivered to the skin surface, and the current studies do not include real-time closed-loop control connecting sensing and actuation. That constrains immediate deployment as an adaptive everyday system.

Boundary conditions

Effects depend on beverage temperature and individual sensory profile; the paper reports that cooling tends to enhance positive evaluations, while warming effects are more complex and context dependent. The findings are based on controlled lab studies with small samples.

Manual check: false

Position in field

This sits at the intersection of interoception, wearable thermal feedback, and personalized sensory augmentation. Its field contribution is a bidirectional laryngeal interaction concept backed by a computational personalization pipeline rather than a standalone stimulation effect.

Abstract

The sensation of a drink in the throat is a salient example of the internal bodily feelings that shape our eating experiences. Computationally modeling these sensations would enable their redesign and inform technologies that augment how we eat. However, methods for quantifying such subjective, internal states from objective cues remain underdeveloped. This paper introduces a computational approach to bridge this gap. A first study (N=31) models subjective ratings from laryngeal skin temperature and ingested volume, revealing distinct, individual Interoceptive Profiles. Informed by these findings, we developed a wearable device that provides thermal feedback to the larynx. A second study (N=20) demonstrates that this intervention can alter drink sensations, contingent on the user's sensory profile. Based on these findings, we highlight the potential of the larynx as a site for bidirectional interaction (sensing and modulating) and propose a novel approach for personalized sensory augmentation.