If for no other reason than the fact that eating and drinking gives us pleasure, it is of interest to understand the physiology of gustation. In this issue, Lyall et al. (2002a) have uncovered the key cellular mechanisms that occur in taste receptor cells (TRCs) when certain mixtures of chemicals (tastants) are applied to the anterior tongue. In much the same way as music produced by a quartet ...

The responses of single parabrachial nucleus (PBN) neurons were recorded extracellularly to characterize their sensitivity to stimulation of individual gustatory receptor subpopulations (G neurons, n = 75) or mechanical stimulation of defined oral regions (M neurons, n = 54) then localized to morphologically defined PBN subdivisions. Convergence from separate oral regions onto single neurons oc...

Injection of horseradish peroxidase into the secondary gustatory nucleus of the green sunfish, Lepomis cyanellus, resulted in retrogradely filled neurons bilaterally in the viscerosensory column of the brainstem and in anterograde transport revealing ipsilateral terminal fields in the preglomerular tertiary gustatory nucleus, the nucleus of the torus lateralis and the central and periventricula...

Taste perception plays an important role in animal’s detection of nutrients, conveying key dietary information, fundamental for its growth and survival. Because alternative terrestrial ingredients are known to affect the feeding rainbow trout (RT, Oncorhynchus mykiss), we aimed assess importance taste receptors detection. Using self-feeders, examined behavior (30 days a trial followed by 10 pre...

A novel family of candidate gustatory receptors (GRs) was recently identified in searches of the Drosophila genome. We have performed in situ hybridization and transgene experiments that reveal expression of these genes in both gustatory and olfactory neurons in adult flies and larvae. This gene family is likely to encode both odorant and taste receptors. We have visualized the projections of c...

OBJECTIVE Presentation of a case of perioral Frey syndrome. DESIGN Case report. SUBJECT A 72-year-old woman with hyperhidrosis around the mouth and chin. RESULTS This patient suffered from bilateral perioral gustatory sweating following a mandibular osteotomy; such a case has not previously been described. Possible pathophysiological hypotheses are discussed in relation to the anatomy and...

The parabrachial nuclei (PbN), the second central relay for the gustatory pathway, transfers taste information to various forebrain gustatory nuclei and to the gustatory cortex. The nucleus accumbens is one of the critical neural substrates of the reward system, and the nucleus accumbens shell region (NAcSh) is associated with feeding behavior. Taste-evoked neuronal responses of PbN neurons are...

Evoked potentials are widely used in clinical medicine for objective evaluation of sensory disturbances. However, gustatory evoked potentials (GEPs) have not been extensively studied due to lack of agreement among investigators regarding the waveforms. In this study GEPs and gustatory magnetic fields (GEMfs) were simultaneously recorded from five subjects in response to 0.3 M NaCl in an attempt...