Direct behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for retronasal olfaction in mice

The neuroscience of flavor perception is hence becoming increasingly important to understand food flavor perception that guides food selection, ingestion and appreciation. We recently provided evidence that rats can use the retronasal mode of olfaction, an essential element of human flavor perceptio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-02, Vol.10 (2), p.e0117218-e0117218
Main Authors: Rebello, Michelle R, Kandukuru, Padma, Verhagen, Justus V
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acetic acid
Animals
Behavior, Animal
Calcium
Contamination
Distilled water
Esters
Flavor
Flavors
Food
Food contamination
Food selection
Genetic engineering
Ingestion
Male
Mice
Models, Animal
Nervous system
Neurophysiology
Neurosciences
Odorants
Odors
Olfaction
Olfactory bulb
Olfactory Bulb - physiology
Olfactory Receptor Neurons - physiology
Olfactory stimuli
Optical Imaging - methods
Perception
Rats
Rodents
Smell
Tastants
Taste
Transgenic mice
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Summary:The neuroscience of flavor perception is hence becoming increasingly important to understand food flavor perception that guides food selection, ingestion and appreciation. We recently provided evidence that rats can use the retronasal mode of olfaction, an essential element of human flavor perception. We showed that in rats, like humans, odors can acquire a taste. We and others also defined how the input of the olfactory bulb (OB) -not functionally imageable in humans- codes retronasal smell in anesthetized rat. The powerful awake transgenic mouse, however, would be a valuable additional model in the study of flavor neuroscience. We used a go/no-go behavioral task to test the mouse's ability to detect and discriminate the retronasal odor amyl acetate. In this paradigm a tasteless aqueous odor solution was licked by water-restricted head-fixed mice from a lick spout. Orthonasal contamination was avoided. The retronasal odor was successfully discriminated by mice against pure distilled water in a concentration-dependent manner. Bulbectomy removed the mice's ability to discriminate the retronasal odor but not tastants. The OB showed robust optical calcium responses to retronasal odorants in these awake mice. These results suggest that mice, like rats, are capable of smelling retronasally. This direct neuro-behavioral evidence establishes the mouse as a useful additional animal model for flavor research.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0117218