Previous studies suggest that the chorda tympani nerve (CT) is important in transmitting fat taste information to the central nervous system. However, the contribution of the CT in this process may depend upon the presence of other taste stimuli and/or differ in males and females. Accordingly, the present study investigated the role of the CT in free fatty acid taste processing by examining ele...

Previous studies have shown a modulatory influence of forebrain gustatory areas, such as the gustatory cortex and lateral hypothalamus, on the activity of taste-responsive cells in the nucleus of the solitary tract (NST). The central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA), which receives gustatory afferent information, also exerts descending control over taste neurons in the parabrachial nuclei (PbN) of...

Network state influences the processing of incoming stimuli. It is reasonable to expect, therefore, that animals might adjust cortical activity to improve sensory coding of behaviorally relevant stimuli. We tested this hypothesis, recording single-neuron activity from gustatory cortex (GC) in rats engaged in a two-alternative forced-choice taste discrimination task, and assaying the responses o...

Rats were given to drink an unfamiliar taste solution under conditions that result in long-term memory of that taste. The insular cortex, which contains the taste cortex, was then removed and assayed for activation of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades by using antibodies to the activated forms of various MAPKs. Extracellular responsive kinase 1-2 (ERK1-2) in the cortical homogena...

A growing literature suggests taste stimuli commonly classified as "bitter" induce heterogeneous neural and perceptual responses. Here, the central processing of bitter stimuli was studied in mice with genetically controlled bitter taste profiles. Using these mice removed genetic heterogeneity as a factor influencing gustatory neural codes for bitter stimuli. Electrophysiological activity (spik...

Taste memory depends on motivational and post-ingestional consequences; thus, it can be aversive (e.g., conditioned taste aversion, CTA) if a novel, palatable taste is paired with visceral malaise, or it can be appetitive if no intoxication appears after novel taste consumption, and a taste preference is developed.The nucleus accumbens (NAc) plays a role in hedonic reactivity to taste stimuli, ...

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...

There is a large body of evidence suggesting that cholinergic activity is involved in memory processes. It seems that cholinergic activity is essential to learn several tasks and recent works suggest that acetylcholine plays an important role during the early stages of memory formation. In this review, we will discuss the results related to taste memory formation, focusing particularly on the c...

Our previous studies have demonstrated that gustatory neurons in the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) show altered responses after the acquisition of conditioned taste aversion (CTA) to NaCl. The present study was conducted 1) to examine centrifugal influences on the altered gustatory activity of CTA-trained rats, and 2) to evaluate the role of amiloride-sensitive (ASN) and -insensitive NaCl (AIN) be...

Standard sociological theories of ‘taste-as-refinement’, which view taste as a means to maintain social distance among different social classes, conflict with tastemaking practice in pluralistic societies where taste standards are no longer exclusively defined by a society’s elite strata. To better account for the heterogeneity of tastemaking in modern societies, this article suggests a framewo...