Functional Organization of the Central Gustatory System

中枢味觉系统的功能组织

• 批准号: 8708016
• 负责人: Alan C Spector
• 金额: $ 30.12万
• 依托单位: FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8708016
• 关键词: Affect; Affective; Animal Model; Animals; Behavioral; Behavioral Assay; Brain; Clinical; Clinical Management; Complex; Data; Detection; Development; Discrimination; Disease; Equilibrium; Goals; Health; Human; Hypogeusia; Ibotenic Acid; Impairment; Injury; Insula of Reil; Intake; Lesion; Link; Literature; Location; Maintenance; Measures; Modality; Modeling; Molecular; Neurobiology; Neurons; Nutritional status; Obesity; Outcome; Pathway interactions; Patients; Pharmacology; Phenotype; Physiological; Population; Procedures; Process; Prosencephalon; Psychophysics; Publishing; Quality of life; Rattus; Relative (related person); Rodent; Role; Sensory; Series; Signal Transduction; Site; Specificity; Stimulus; Structure; System; Taste Perception; Testing; Therapeutic Intervention; Vision; animal model development; base; behavior observation; conditioning; design; drinking; feeding; hedonic; infancy; parabrachial nucleus; preference; programs; public health relevance; research study

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Injury to structures in the central gustatory system such as the insula and operculum, the site of primary gustatory cortex in humans, can alter the flow of ascending and descending taste-related information through the brain which has great potential to disrupt normal gustatory processing and can have detrimental consequences on health and quality of life. As more advances are made in discerning the pharmacology, connectivity, and physiological phenotype of taste-responsive neurons in the brain, it is becoming increasingly critical for the field to develop and apply appropriate behavioral assays in animal models to explicitly link neurobiological processes to taste function. There is evidence in the literature that patients with damage involving primary gustatory cortex display hypogeusia and have difficulty identifying and recognizing tastes. In rats, lesions in the gustatory cortex retard, but do not eliminate, the acquisition of a conditioned taste aversion, retard acquisition of taste-based anticipatory contrast, and impair the expression of taste neophobia. In contrast, these lesions cause little, if any, effect on unconditioned taste preference and avoidance and do not disrupt taste preference conditioning. The prevailing view in the literature is that animals with gustatory cortex lesions display normal taste detection and discriminability, but, in actuality, this remains to be explicitly tested. Virtually all of the experiments on the effects of gustatory cortex lesions in rats have involved assessment of either conditioned or unconditioned affective/hedonic responsiveness to taste compounds. Moreover, with few exceptions, taste palatability has been assessed with intake and preference tests, which can be heavily influenced by postingestive factors and provide only a partial analysis of affective responsiveness. Thus, conclusions regarding the functional role of gustatory cortex are based on a relatively constrained set of behavioral observations. The goal of the proposed series of experiments is to fill this interpretive void by explicitly testing the necessity of the gustatory cortex in the maintenance of sensory-discriminative vs. affective taste function. Using a technically sophisticated apparatus (gustometer), we plan to test rats with and without ibotenic acid-induced lesions in the gustatory cortex in a variety of behavioral tasks designed to measure taste sensitivity (Exp. 1), taste quality discrimination (Exp.2 & 3), the qualitative specificity of conditioned taste aversions (Exp. 3), and unconditioned affective responsiveness to taste stimuli as assessed by brief access licking tests (Exp. 4) and oromotor taste reactivity (Exp. 5). We predict that these lesions will blunt sensitivity and compromise the animal's ability to discriminate among taste stimuli that are used as sensory signals in psychophysical tasks, without affecting the palatability of the compounds. Regardless of the specific outcomes of these experiments, the data generated should provide a functional context in which to understand central gustatory processing.

描述（由申请人提供）：对中枢味觉系统结构的损伤，如脑岛和脑盖（人类初级味觉皮层的位置），可以改变通过大脑的上升和下降味觉相关信息的流动，这有很大的可能破坏正常的味觉处理，并可能对健康和生活质量产生有害后果。随着在识别大脑中味觉反应神经元的药理学，连通性和生理表型方面取得更多进展，在动物模型中开发和应用适当的行为分析以明确地将神经生物学过程与味觉功能联系起来，这一领域变得越来越重要。文献中有证据表明，初级味觉皮层受损的患者表现出味觉减退，难以识别和识别味道。在大鼠中，味觉皮层的病变延缓（但不消除）条件性味觉厌恶的习得，延缓基于味觉的预期对比的习得，并损害味觉新恐惧症的表达。相比之下，这些病变对非条件味觉偏好和回避的影响很小，如果有的话，也不会破坏味觉偏好条件反射。文献中流行的观点是，有味觉皮层损伤的动物表现出正常的味觉检测和辨别能力，但实际上，这还有待明确的测试。事实上，所有关于大鼠味觉皮层损伤影响的实验都涉及对味觉化合物的条件或非条件情感/享乐反应的评估。此外，除了少数例外，口味的适口性是通过摄入和偏好测试来评估的，这可能受到摄入后因素的严重影响，并且只能提供部分的情感反应分析。因此，关于味觉皮层的功能作用的结论是基于一组相对有限的行为观察。提出的一系列实验的目标是通过明确测试味觉皮层在维持感觉区分与情感味觉功能方面的必要性来填补这一解释空白。使用技术先进的仪器（味觉计），我们计划在多种行为任务中测试有和没有伊博tenic酸诱导的味觉皮层病变的大鼠，这些行为任务旨在测量味觉敏感性（实验1），味觉质量辨别（实验2和3），条件味觉厌恶的定性特异性（实验3），以及对味觉刺激的非条件情感反应，通过简短的接触舔测试（实验4）和运动味觉反应（实验5）来评估。我们预测，这些损伤将削弱灵敏度，损害动物区分在心理物理任务中用作感官信号的味觉刺激的能力，而不会影响化合物的适口性。无论这些实验的具体结果如何，所产生的数据应该提供一个功能背景，以了解中央味觉处理。

项目成果

Post-oral sugar detection rapidly and chemospecifically modulates taste-guided behavior.

口腔后糖检测快速并化学特异性地调节味觉引导行为。

• DOI: 10.1152/ajpregu.00155.2016
• 发表时间: 2016
• 期刊: American journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology
• 作者: Schier,LindseyA;Spector,AlanC
• 通讯作者: Spector,AlanC

Behavioral Evidence for More than One Taste Signaling Pathway for Sugars in Rats.

大鼠中不止一种糖味信号通路的行为证据。

• DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.3356-15.2016
• 发表时间: 2016
• 期刊: The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
• 作者: Schier,LindseyA;Spector,AlanC
• 通讯作者: Spector,AlanC