Distinct representations of basic taste qualities in human gustatory cortex

Junichi Chikazoe (), Daniel H. Lee, Nikolaus Kriegeskorte and Adam K. Anderson ()
Additional contact information
Junichi Chikazoe: National Institute for Physiological Sciences
Daniel H. Lee: University of Colorado
Nikolaus Kriegeskorte: Columbia University
Adam K. Anderson: Cornell University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The mammalian tongue contains gustatory receptors tuned to basic taste types, providing an evolutionarily old hedonic compass for what and what not to ingest. Although representation of these distinct taste types is a defining feature of primary gustatory cortex in other animals, their identification has remained elusive in humans, leaving the demarcation of human gustatory cortex unclear. Here we used distributed multivoxel activity patterns to identify regions with patterns of activity differentially sensitive to sweet, salty, bitter, and sour taste qualities. These were found in the insula and overlying operculum, with regions in the anterior and middle insula discriminating all tastes and representing their combinatorial coding. These findings replicated at super-high 7 T field strength using different compounds of sweet and bitter taste types, suggesting taste sensation specificity rather than chemical or receptor specificity. Our results provide evidence of the human gustatory cortex in the insula.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08857-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-08857-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08857-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().