Elsevier

Neuroscience Letters

Volume 28, Issue 1, 22 January 1982, Pages 9-14
Neuroscience Letters

Convergence of input from tongue and palate to the parabrachial nucleus neurons of rats

https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3940(82)90200-2Get rights and content

Abstract

Receptive fields (RFs) in the oral cavity were examined for 24 taste and 20 mechanoreceptive neurons in the parabrachial nucleus (PB) of anesthetized rats. All of the units studied had an RF on the ipsilateral half of the oral cavity. About half of the units in each category had at least two separate RFs. Most of the ‘taste neurons’, i.e. units receiving taste inputs, were activated by mechanical stimulation and some of them had a complex RF, e.g. separated into two parts, one on the tongue for taste and one on the palate for mechanical stimulation. The present findings show that the afferent inputs of two modalities from the tongue and palate converge on the PB neurons.

References (15)

  • W. Makous et al.

    The gustatory relay in the medulla

  • R. Norgren

    Gustatory afferents to ventral forebrain

    Brain Res.

    (1974)
  • H. Ogawa et al.

    Taste relay neurons in the solitary tract nucleus of rats

    Neurosci. Lett.

    (1980)
  • A.E. Applebaum et al.

    Organization and receptive fields of primate spinothalamic tract neurons

    J. Neurophysiol.

    (1975)
  • P.O. Bishop et al.

    The identification of single units in central visual pathways

    J. Physiol. (Lond.)

    (1962)
  • P.O. Bishop et al.

    The interpretation of the extracellular response of single lateral geniculate cells

    J. Physiol. (Lond.)

    (1962)
  • A.G. Brown et al.

    Responses of spinocervical tract neurons to natural stimulation of identified cutaneous receptors

    Exp. Brain Res.

    (1969)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (53)

  • Macroscopic Connection Of Rat Insular Cortex: Anatomical Bases Underlying Its Physiological Functions

    2011, International Review of Neurobiology
    Citation Excerpt :

    This region overlaps with regions that are activated by the stimulation of the chorda tympani, lingual, glossopharyngeal, and palatal nerves (Yamamoto and Kawamura, 1979; Yamamoto et al., 1980). In contrast to the properties of neurons in the pontine parabrachial nuclei (Ogawa et al., 1982) and nucleus of the solitary tract (Ogawa and Hayama et al., 1984), many gustatory neurons have wide receptive field (Yamamoto et al., 1984), suggesting that gustatory information in the oropharyngeal region is integrated in the IC. In monkey IC, there are quite a few gustatory neurons that respond specifically to one of the four basic tastants: i.e. sucrose, NaCl, HCl, and quinine (Ito and Ogawa, 1994).

  • Central Neural Processing of Taste Information

    2008, The Senses: A Comprehensive Reference
  • Oral and gastric input to the parabrachial nucleus of the rat

    2002, Brain Research
    Citation Excerpt :

    Increased convergence in PBN, manifested by larger receptive fields compared to those in the NST, appears to be a general attribute of PBN processing. Thus, compared to the NST, a higher percentage of neurons in the PBN responded to stimulation of both the tongue and palate [28], the anterior and posterior oral cavity [15], or to both vagal and splanchnic nerve stimulation [43]. Likewise, convergence between visceral and taste afferents not evident in the NST [19], was demonstrated in the PBN with electrical stimulation of the vagus combined with anterior tongue stimulation [20].

  • Cooling lesions of the lateral parabrachial nucleus during LiCl activation block acquisition of conditioned taste avoidance in male rats

    2002, Brain Research
    Citation Excerpt :

    Because the lesioned animals were unable to learn an avoidance to a nongustatory stimulus as well as a gustatory stimulus, these authors suggested that the lesions disrupted ascending visceral processing and not taste processing. However, neuroanatomical and electrophysiological studies have shown that orosomatic inputs that are transmitted through the trigeminal nerve also project to the parabrachial nuclei [10,36]. In addition, the lesioned animals in the Reilly and Trifunovic study [48] failed to demonstrate neophobia to both the gustatory and trigeminal stimuli.

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text