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The Journal of Neuroscience, June 29, 2005, 25(26):6047-6056; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0430-05.2005

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Gustatory Neural Responses in the Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex of the Old World Monkey

Thomas C. Pritchard,¹ Erin M. Edwards,¹ Carrie A. Smith,¹ Kristen G. Hilgert,¹ Andrew M. Gavlick,¹ Thomas D. Maryniak,¹ Gary J. Schwartz,² and Thomas R. Scott³

¹Department of Neural and Behavioral Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania 17033, ²Departments of Medicine and Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, and ³San Diego State University College of Sciences, La Jolla, California 92182

The primary taste cortex has widespread and occasionally dense projections to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in the macaque. Nonetheless, electrophysiological studies have revealed that only 2-8% of the cells in the OFC are activated by taste stimuli on the tongue. We describe an area centered in Brodmann's area 13m of the medial OFC (mOFC) where taste neurons are more concentrated. It consists of a 12 mm² core, where gustatory neurons constituted 20% of the population, and a 1 mm perimeter in which 8% of the cells responded to taste. Data were collected from three awake cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) prepared for chronic recording. Single neurons were isolated with epoxylite-coated tungsten microelectrodes and tested for responsiveness to 1.0 M glucose, 0.3 M NaCl, 0.03 M HCl, and 0.001 M QHCl. These stimuli elicited responses that were 96% excitatory and ranged from 5.2 to 5.9 spikes/s. Cells were broadly tuned (H = 0.79), similar to those in the anterior insula (H = 0.70), and decidedly unlike the narrowly tuned taste neurons in the caudolateral OFC (clOFC; H = 0.39). Whereas 82% of the taste cells in the clOFC respond to glucose, in the mOFC, HCl-responsive (56%), glucose-responsive (50%), NaCl-responsive (43%), and QHCl-responsive (40%) cells were almost evenly represented. The mOFC taste area appears to comprise a major gustatory relay that lies anatomically and functionally between the anterior insula and the clOFC.

Key words: taste; orbitofrontal; cortex; macaque; coding; neurophysiology

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Received Feb 1, 2005; revised May 10, 2005; accepted May 13, 2005.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				A. H. Lara, S. W. Kennerley, and J. D. Wallis Encoding of Gustatory Working Memory by Orbitofrontal Neurons J. Neurosci., January 21, 2009; 29(3): 765 - 774. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. M. Simmons and B. J. Richmond Dynamic Changes in Representations of Preceding and Upcoming Reward in Monkey Orbitofrontal Cortex Cereb Cortex, January 1, 2008; 18(1): 93 - 103. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. C. Spector and S. P. Travers The representation of taste quality in the Mammalian nervous system. Behav Cogn Neurosci Rev, September 1, 2005; 4(3): 143 - 191. [Abstract] [PDF]

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