Gustatory Responses in the Alert Monkey.

味觉是一种非常重要的感觉，因为它涉及食物的选择和偏好，并与饥饿、摄取和行为的营养方面有关。大多数关于味觉的研究都涉及啮齿动物，它们的生理和行为方面与人类非常不同，几乎没有关于味觉处理的数据来比较人类的感觉能力和啮齿动物的生理能力。这项研究使用了一种从行为动物身上进行慢性记录的新方法，来探索灵长类动物大脑皮质的活动如何与行为相关。将探索大脑皮质的反应特征和功能组织，以确定来自人类心理物理研究的数据与电生理数据的匹配程度。这一新的方法将为化学感觉科学提供重要的数据，比较味觉皮质与其他感觉皮质区域的功能组织，并进一步了解大脑活动是如何影响感知和行为的。

Taste is a very important sense because it is involved in food selection and preference, and related to hunger, ingestion, and nutritional aspects of behavior. Most studies of taste have involved rodents, which have aspects of physiology and behavior very different from humans, and there are few data on gustatory processing to compare human sensory capabilities with rodent physiology. This study utilizes a novel approach of chronic recording from a behaving animal to explore how activity in the cortex of a primate brain correlates to behavior. Response characteristics and functional organization of the cortex will be explored, to determine how well data from human psychophysical studies are matched by electrophysiological data. This novel approach will provide data important for chemosensory science, for comparing functional organization of gustatory cortex with other sensory cortical areas, and for further understanding how brain activity underlies perception and behavior.