Serotonergic modulation of taste

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请的目的是提供动物味觉心理物理学的专门培训，这是一个将味觉系统的神经生物学机制与行为评估味觉功能联系起来的不可或缺的领域。为了实现这一目标，将使用心理物理程序进行实验，以评估5-羟色胺的药理学调节对大鼠味觉引导行为的影响。影响摄食行为的药物通常被认为是通过调节食物和液体味道的奖励特性来实现的。了解这些药物的作用机制对于确定味觉的享乐方面在饮食行为中的作用至关重要，这无可争议地导致了这个国家日益严重的肥胖问题。然而，在没有首先评估其对感觉辨别功能的影响的情况下，得出药物只影响味觉的享乐成分的结论还为时过早。5-羟色胺是一种普遍存在的神经递质，在大脑和与味觉和奖赏有关的外围区域起作用。影响多巴胺能传递的药物影响食物和液体的摄入，并影响抑郁和健康人群的味觉。这在多大程度上是由品味的享乐或歧视方面造成的，还有待确定。本提案中的实验旨在明确测试5-羟色胺再摄取抑制剂和促进剂（因此分别为功能性激动剂和拮抗剂）对心理物理任务性能的剂量相关影响。这些任务评估浓度依赖性的变化，检测，识别和享乐的味觉刺激的反应。在一个朝着理解味觉的生理硬件快速发展的领域，需要精通行为技术的科学家将越来越多的关于味觉加工的神经生物学、细胞和分子机制的信息与其最终的共同输出--行为联系起来。 公共卫生相关性：该提案中的实验旨在评估药物如何不仅影响某种东西的“好”或“坏”味道，而且影响它的强度和味道，而不受其奖励或厌恶特征的影响。这些研究将有助于确定体内的化学信号如何影响味觉引导行为（即，饮食）。这些信息可以帮助临床医生理解并更有效地治疗受味觉奖励特征影响的进食障碍患者（例如，肥胖）和味觉感知被扭曲的精神疾病（例如，抑郁症）。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal ofthis application is to provide specialized training in animal taste psychophysics, a field which is indispensablle in linking neurobiological mechanisms of the gustatory system to behaviorally assessed taste function. To achieve this goal, experiments will be conducted using psychophysical procedures to assess the effects of pharmacological modulation of serotonin on taste-guided behavior in rats. Drugs that affect ingestive behavior are often assumed to do so by modulating the rewarding characteristics of the taste of foods and fluids. Understanding the mechanisms of action of these drugs is crucial to defining the role of the hedonic aspect of taste in eating behavior, which indisputably is contributing to this nation's growing problem with obesity. However, it is premature to conclude that a drug only affects hedonic components of taste without first assessing its effects on sensory-discriminative function. Serotonin is a ubiquitous neurotrasmitter that has actions in areas of the brain and periphery involved in taste and reward. Drugs that impinge on serotonergic transmission affect ingestion of food and fluid and impact taste perceptions in depressed and healthy humans. The extent to which this results from hedonic or discriminative aspects of taste has yet to be determined. The experiments in this proposal are designed to explicitly test the dose-related effect of an inhibitor and a facilitator of serotonin reuptake (and thus a functional agonist and antagonist, respectively) on performance in psychophysical tasks. These tasks assess concentration-dependent changes in the detection of, identification of, and hedonic responsiveness to taste stimuli. In a field advancing rapidly toward understanding the physiologic hardware of taste perception, scientists fluent in behavioral techniques are needed to link the growing body of information concerning the neurobiological, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of taste processing to its final common output - behavior. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The experiments in this proposal are designed to assess how drugs not only affect how "good" or "bad" something tastes, but also how strong it is and what it tastes like, independent of its rewarding or aversive characterisfics. These studies will help define how chemical signaling in the body affects taste-guided behavior (i.e., eating and drinking). This informafion may help clinicians understand and more effectively treat patients with eating disorders affected by the rewarding characteristics of taste (e.g., obesity) and psychiatric disorders in which taste percepfions are distorted (e.g., depression).