Oral thermal processing in the gustatory cortex of awake mice

Chemical Senses · 4 authors, 4 centres

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The central result is that GC neurons respond to and discriminate a wide range of innocuous oral temperatures (deionized water) in a mostly monotonic manner, with responses distributed across the GC in an antero-postero gradient. The activity was primarily driven by the thermal feature of the stimulus. Thermal stimuli recruited GC neurons that also respond to taste, and these multi-modal neurons showed different taste quality coding and tuning properties compared to taste-selective neurons. This work provides the first detailed cortical code for oral thermosensation in behaving mice.

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preclinical research

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ORIGINAL PAPER

PMC10630187

Oral thermal processing in the gustatory cortex of awake mice

Chemical Senses

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ABSTRACT

Abstract Oral temperature is a sensory cue relevant to food preference and nutrition. To understand how orally sourced thermal inputs are represented in the gustatory cortex (GC), we recorded neural responses from the GC of male and female mice presented with deionized water at different innocuous temperatures (14 °C, 25 °C, and 36 °C) and taste stimuli (room temperature). Our results demonstrate that GC neurons encode orally sourced thermal information in the absence of classical taste qualities at the single neuron and population levels, as confirmed through additional experiments comparing GC neuron responses to water and artificial saliva. Analysis of thermal-evoked responses showed broadly tuned neurons that responded to temperature in a mostly monotonic manner. Spatial location may play a minor role regarding thermosensory activity; aside from the most ventral GC, neurons reliably responded to and encoded thermal information across the dorso-ventral and antero-postero cortical axes. Additional analysis revealed that more than half of the GC neurons that encoded chemosensory taste stimuli also accurately discriminated thermal information, providing additional evidence of the GC’s involvement in processing thermosensory information important for ingestive behaviors. In terms of convergence, we found that GC neurons encoding information about both taste and temperature were broadly tuned and carried more information than taste-selective-only neurons; both groups encoded similar information about the palatability of stimuli. Altogether, our data reveal new details of the cortical code for the mammalian oral thermosensory system in behaving mice and pave the way for future investigations on GC functions and operational principles with respect to thermogustation. Keywords: oral, gustatory, thermal, cortex, flavor, eating

CITATION EXPORT

Cecilia G Bouaichi, Katherine E Odegaard, Camden Neese et al.. Oral thermal processing in the gustatory cortex of awake mice. Chemical Senses. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1093/chemse/bjad042

AUTHORS

4 · 4 CENTRES

Cecilia G Bouaichi, Katherine E Odegaard, Camden Neese, Roberto Vincis

1 Department of Biological Science and Programs in Neuroscience, Cell and Molecular Biology, and Biophysics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
2 Department of Biological Science and Programs in Neuroscience, Cell and Molecular Biology, and Biophysics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
3 Department of Biological Science and Programs in Neuroscience, Cell and Molecular Biology, and Biophysics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
4 Department of Biological Science and Programs in Neuroscience, Molecular Biophysics and Cell and Molecular Biology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States