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The gustatory cortex, or primary gustatory cortex, is a region of the cerebral cortex responsible for the perception of taste and flavour. It is comprised of the anterior insula on the insular lobe and the frontal operculum on the frontal lobe.
The valence of information about food sources can be conflicting. Here, the authors show that activity in a small population of neurons projecting to the fan-shaped body of Drosophila represents food choice during sensory conflict.
Sensory stimuli are recognized faster when they are expected. Comparing a spiking network model to cortical recordings from behaving animals, Mazzucato et al. show that expectation accelerates sensory processing by modulating the intrinsically generated activity preceding stimulation.
Previous research shows how taste types are represented across regions of the brain in non-human animals. Here, the authors examine how four basic tastes are represented in the human brain, showing evidence of the human gustatory cortex in the insula.
The identity and hedonic value of tastes are encoded in distinct neural substrates; in mice, the amygdala is necessary and sufficient to drive valence-specific behaviours in response to bitter or sweet taste stimuli, and the cortex can independently represent taste identity.
A study in mice shows that manipulating the activity of the cortical fields associated with sweet and bitter tastes mediates the perception of taste and drives associated behaviours.
By demonstrating that inactivation of gustatory cortex influences olfactory recognition, a new study finds that the interaction between taste and smell is bidirectional.
