## 4 Conclusions  
Based on the established working hypotheses, our study confirmed two out of three. Mastication parameters show a slight but not statistically significant trend associated with the pungency intensity of the sauce, so the main conclusion may be that the pungency does not fully affect oral processing parameters. However, a possible explanation may also be the complexity of grilled meat used as a carrier. Saliva incorporation shows an increasing trend depending on the hot sauce, especially at the middle of mastication (25 strokes) and at the end (swallowing), with a correlation with the number of chews. Regarding the second hypothesis, our study employed TI and TDPS, considering both intensity and pungency sensation attributes. TDPS results show that the samples differ in their combination of dominant pungency sensations depending on the SHU values. TI results also clearly show a correlation between time-intensity and SHU values. Both TI and TDPS showed that the complexity of understanding pungency sensations is in relation to both intensity and different sensations, observed through a time dimension. Finally, the use of emotion detection software in analyzing the faces of panelists during mastication confirmed an increase in non-neutral emotions associated with the increase in pungency intensity.  
Future investigations should focus on identifying and controlling biases associated with different food matrices and inter-variability of individuals (gender, age, nationality) in analyzing pungency effects on food oral processing parameters and emotions detected during mastication. Additionally, further research should focus on the correlation between TDPS and emotion detection.  
This study has several limitations. First is the use of only one culinary method--grilling. The other is the use of meat as an anisotropic material with high complexity. Finally, conclusions, although in a certain way straightforward, require further investigation on other types of food systems to be applied in general.  
Conceptualization, I.D.; methodology, I.D., J.I., and R.D.; software, I.D. and R.D.; validation, J.I. and R.D.; formal analysis, I.D. and J.C.; investigation, J.I.; resources, I.D.; data curation, J.I. and R.D.; writing--original draft preparation, I.D.; writing--review and editing, I.D., J.C., B.G.S., D.V., and I.T.; visualization, J.I.; supervision, J.C. and I.T.; funding acquisition, I.D. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the Innovation Fund from the budget of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Education, Science and Technical Development through the \"Competitiveness and Jobs Project\". The results within this research originated from a Proof of Concept project #5229, \"Design of artificial masticator for modelling food oral processing\".  
Ethical Review--This study was performed according to the Codex of professional ethics of the University of Belgrade (Kodeks professionalne etike Univerziteta u Beogradu 193/2016).  
All participants involved in the sensory analysis and oral processing study gave written informed consent prior to beginning this study.  
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.