PUBLICATION
Evolutionary conserved brainstem circuits encode category, concentration and mixtures of taste
- Authors
- Vendrell-Llopis, N., Yaksi, E.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-151208-5
- Date
- 2015
- Source
- Scientific Reports 5: 17825 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Yaksi, Emre
- Keywords
- Gustatory system, Neural circuits, Sensory processing
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Biological Evolution*
- Brain
- Brain Stem/physiology*
- Neural Pathways/physiology*
- Taste/physiology*
- Zebrafish/physiology*
- PubMed
- 26639368 Full text @ Sci. Rep.
Citation
Vendrell-Llopis, N., Yaksi, E. (2015) Evolutionary conserved brainstem circuits encode category, concentration and mixtures of taste. Scientific Reports. 5:17825.
Abstract
Evolutionary conserved brainstem circuits are the first relay for gustatory information in the vertebrate brain. While the brainstem circuits act as our life support system and they mediate vital taste related behaviors, the principles of gustatory computations in these circuits are poorly understood. By a combination of two-photon calcium imaging and quantitative animal behavior in juvenile zebrafish, we showed that taste categories are represented by dissimilar brainstem responses and generate different behaviors. We also showed that the concentration of sour and bitter tastes are encoded by different principles and with different levels of sensitivity. Moreover, we observed that the taste mixtures lead to synergistic and suppressive interactions. Our results suggest that these interactions in early brainstem circuits can result in non-linear computations, such as dynamic gain modulation and discrete representation of taste mixtures, which can be utilized for detecting food items at broad range of concentrations of tastes and rejecting inedible substances.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping