What's the Cephalic Phase of Digestion?

As soon as you taste something, it's only because the nerve endings in the mouth have sent a message to the brain telling the brain what's there. And that sense comes to the conscious state and you say, oh, sweet. And then it alerts the rest of the body down below what needs to happen. There was a recent study where they had cyclists tasting a sports drink and spitting it out. They found the ones that were spitting it out and only tasting it and not ingesting it were responding to carbohydrates.