 |
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The Journal of Neuroscience, February 7, 2007, 27(6):1396-1404; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5188-06.2007
Previous Article | Next Article
Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Differential Spatial Representation of Taste Modalities in the Rat Gustatory Cortex
Riccardo Accolla,1,2 Brice Bathellier,1,3 Carl C. H. Petersen,2 andAlan Carleton1 1Flavour Perception Group, 2Laboratory of Sensory Processing, and 3Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Correspondence should be addressed to Alan Carleton at the above address. Email: alan.carleton{at}epfl.ch
Discrimination between foods is crucial for the nutrition and survival of animals. Remarkable progress has been made through molecular and genetic manipulations in the understanding of the coding of taste at the receptor level. However, much less is known about the cortical processing of taste sensation and the organizing principles of the gustatory cortex (GC). Using genetic tracing, it has recently been shown that sweet and bitter taste are processed through segregated neuronal circuitries along the gustatory pathway up to the cortical level. This is in disagreement with the evidence that GC neurons recorded in both anesthetized and behaving animals responded to multiple taste modalities (including sweet and bitter). To investigate the functional architecture of the GC in regard to taste modalities, we used in vivo intrinsic optical imaging, a technique that has been successfully applied to explore the organization of other neocortical regions. We found that four of the primary taste modalities (sweet, bitter, salty, and sour) are represented by distinctive spatial patterns but that no region was specific to a single modality. In addition, we found that two tastants of similar hedonic value (pleasant or unpleasant) activated areas with more common regions than two tastants with opposite hedonic value. In summary, we propose that these specific cortical patterns can be used to discriminate among various tastants.
Key words: taste maps; taste coding; in vivo imaging; sensory perception; intrinsic imaging; gustatory cortex
Received Sept. 20, 2006; revised Dec. 22, 2006; accepted Dec. 29, 2006.
Correspondence should be addressed to Alan Carleton at the above address. Email: alan.carleton{at}epfl.ch
This article has been cited by other articles:
H. Sato, Y. Shimanuki, M. Saito, H. Toyoda, T. Nokubi, Y. Maeda, T. Yamamoto, and Y. Kang
Differential Columnar Processing in Local Circuits of Barrel and Insular Cortices
J. Neurosci., March 19, 2008; 28(12): 3076 - 3089.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
R. Accolla and A. Carleton
Internal body state influences topographical plasticity of sensory representations in the rat gustatory cortex
PNAS, March 11, 2008; 105(10): 4010 - 4015.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
J. V. Verhagen and D. B. Katz
More Time to Taste. Focus on "Variability in Responses and Temporal Coding of Tastants of Similar Quality in the Nucleus of the Solitary Tract of the Rat"
J Neurophysiol, February 1, 2008; 99(2): 413 - 414.
[Full Text] [PDF]
D. M. SMALL, G. BENDER, M. G. VELDHUIZEN, K. RUDENGA, D. NACHTIGAL, and J. FELSTED
The Role of the Human Orbitofrontal Cortex in Taste and Flavor Processing
Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., December 1, 2007; 1121(1): 136 - 151.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|