Breadth of tuning in taste afferent neurons varies with stimulus strength

An Wu, Gennady Dvoryanchikov, Elizabeth Pereira, Nirupa Chaudhari and Stephen D. Roper ()
Additional contact information
An Wu: Graduate Program in Neurosciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami
Gennady Dvoryanchikov: University of Miami
Elizabeth Pereira: University of Miami
Nirupa Chaudhari: Graduate Program in Neurosciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami
Stephen D. Roper: Graduate Program in Neurosciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Gustatory stimuli are detected by taste buds and transmitted to the hindbrain via sensory afferent neurons. Whether each taste quality (sweet, bitter and so on) is encoded by separate neurons (‘labelled lines’) remains controversial. We used mice expressing GCaMP3 in geniculate ganglion sensory neurons to investigate taste-evoked activity. Using confocal calcium imaging, we recorded responses to oral stimulation with prototypic taste stimuli. Up to 69% of neurons respond to multiple tastants. Moreover, neurons tuned to a single taste quality at low concentration become more broadly tuned when stimuli are presented at higher concentration. Responses to sucrose and monosodium glutamate are most related. Although mice prefer dilute NaCl solutions and avoid concentrated NaCl, we found no evidence for two separate populations of sensory neurons that encode this distinction. Altogether, our data suggest that taste is encoded by activity in patterns of peripheral sensory neurons and challenge the notion of strict labelled line coding.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9171 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:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms9171

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9171

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 ().