Olfactory signals from the main olfactory bulb converge with taste information from the chorda tympani nerve in the agranular insular cortex of rats

Gustation and olfaction are integrated into flavor, which contribute to detection and identification of foods. We focused on the insular cortex (IC), as a possible center of flavor integration, because the IC has been reported to receive olfactory in addition to gustatory inputs. In the present repo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Pflügers Archiv 2020-06, Vol.472 (6), p.721-732
Main Authors: Mizoguchi, Naoko, Muramoto, Kazuyo, Kobayashi, Masayuki
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Cell Biology
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Chemoreception
Chorda tympani
Chorda Tympani Nerve - physiology
Computed tomography
Cortex (insular)
Cortex (piriform)
Electric Stimulation - methods
Flavor
Human Physiology
Information processing
Male
Molecular Medicine
Neuroimaging
Neurons - physiology
Neurosciences
Olfaction
Olfactory bulb
Olfactory Bulb - physiology
Rats
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
Receptors
Rodents
Sensory Physiology
Smell
Smell - physiology
Taste
Taste - physiology
Taste Perception - physiology
Temporal cortex
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Gustation and olfaction are integrated into flavor, which contribute to detection and identification of foods. We focused on the insular cortex (IC), as a possible center of flavor integration, because the IC has been reported to receive olfactory in addition to gustatory inputs. In the present report, we tested the hypothesis that these two chemosensory signals are integrated in the IC. We examined the spatiotemporal dynamics of cortical responses induced by stimulating the chorda tympani nerve (CT) and the main olfactory bulb (mOB) in male Sprague-Dawley rats by in vivo optical imaging with a voltage-sensitive dye (VSD). CT stimulation elicited responses in the rostral part of the dysgranular IC (DI), while responses to mOB stimulation were observed in the agranular IC (AI) as well as in the piriform cortex (PC). To characterize the temporal specificity of these responses, we performed combined mOB and CT stimulation with three different timings: simultaneous stimulation and the stimulation of the mOB 150 ms before or after CT stimulation. Simultaneous stimulation increased the signal amplitude in AI additively. These results indicate that the AI and DI contribute to the convergence of gustatory and olfactory information. Of them the DI predominantly processes the taste information, whereas the AI is more sensitive to the olfactory signal.
ISSN:0031-6768
1432-2013
DOI:10.1007/s00424-020-02399-w