Multisensory Integration Underlies the Distinct Representation of Odor-Taste Mixtures in the Gustatory Cortex of Behaving Rats

The perception of food relies on the integration of olfactory and gustatory signals originating from the mouth. This multisensory process generates robust associations between odors and tastes, significantly influencing the perceptual judgment of flavors. However, the specific neural substrates unde...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of neuroscience 2024-05, Vol.44 (20), p.e0071242024
Main Authors: Stocke, Sanaya, Samuelsen, Chad L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Chemoreception
Cortex (gustatory)
Cross-modal
Female
Gustatory system
Information processing
Mixtures
Neurons
Neurons - physiology
Odor
Odorants
Odors
Olfactory Perception - physiology
Rats
Rats, Long-Evans
Representations
Sensorimotor integration
Sensory integration
Smell - physiology
Stimuli
Substrates
Taste
Taste - physiology
Taste Perception - physiology
Unit activity
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Summary:The perception of food relies on the integration of olfactory and gustatory signals originating from the mouth. This multisensory process generates robust associations between odors and tastes, significantly influencing the perceptual judgment of flavors. However, the specific neural substrates underlying this integrative process remain unclear. Previous electrophysiological studies identified the gustatory cortex as a site of convergent olfactory and gustatory signals, but whether neurons represent multimodal odor-taste mixtures as distinct from their unimodal odor and taste components is unknown. To investigate this, we recorded single-unit activity in the gustatory cortex of behaving female rats during the intraoral delivery of individual odors, individual tastes, and odor-taste mixtures. Our results demonstrate that chemoselective neurons in the gustatory cortex are broadly responsive to intraoral chemosensory stimuli, exhibiting time-varying multiphasic changes in activity. In a subset of these chemoselective neurons, odor-taste mixtures elicit nonlinear cross-modal responses that distinguish them from their olfactory and gustatory components. These findings provide novel insights into multimodal chemosensory processing by the gustatory cortex, highlighting the distinct representation of unimodal and multimodal intraoral chemosensory signals. Overall, our findings suggest that olfactory and gustatory signals interact nonlinearly in the gustatory cortex to enhance the identity coding of both unimodal and multimodal chemosensory stimuli.
ISSN:0270-6474
1529-2401
1529-2401
DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0071-24.2024