The past decade has witnessed a consolidation and refinement of the extraordinary
progress made in taste research. This Review describes recent advances in our …

The central gustatory pathways are part of the brain circuits upon which rest the decision to
ingest or reject a food. The quality of food stimuli, however, relies not only on their taste but …

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 …

Visual, auditory, and somatosensory cortices are topographically organized, with neurons
responding to similar sensory features clustering in adjacent portions of the cortex. Such …

Throughout the animal kingdom sucrose is one of the most palatable and preferred tastants.
From an evolutionary perspective, this is not surprising as it is a primary source of energy …

Animals sense cold ambient temperatures through the activation of peripheral
thermoreceptors that express TRPM8, a cold-and menthol-activated ion channel. These …

Taste buds are innervated by neurons whose cell bodies reside in cranial sensory ganglia.
Studies on the functional properties and connectivity of these neurons are hindered by the …

Isolated taste cells, taste buds and strips of lingual tissue from taste papillae secrete ATP
upon taste stimulation. Taste bud receptor (Type II) cells have been identified as the source …

Multiple lines of evidence from molecular studies indicate that individual taste qualities are
encoded by distinct taste receptor cells. In contrast, many physiological studies have found …

When solid or liquid stimuli contact the tongue tip during eating, the sensations of taste,
touch and temperature are immediately evoked, and tongue function relies on these …