Vol. 278, Issue 1, G6-G9, January 2000
THEMES
Nutrient Tasting and Signaling Mechanisms in the Gut
IV. There is
more to taste than meets the tongue*
Donald B.
Katz,
Miguel A. L.
Nicolelis, and
S. A.
Simon
Department of Neurobiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham,
North Carolina 27710
The tongue is the principal organ that
provides sensory information about the quality and quantity of
chemicals in food. Other information about the temperature and texture
of food is also transduced on the tongue, via extragemmal receptors
that form branches of the trigeminal, glossopharyngeal, and vagal
nerves. These systems, together with information from the
gastrointestinal (GI) system, interact to determine whether or not food
is palatable. In this themes article, emphasis is placed on the
integrative aspects of gustatory processing by showing the convergence
of gustatory information with somatosensory, nociceptive, and visceral information (from the GI system) on the tongue and in the brain. Our
thesis is that gustation should be thought of as an integral part of a
distributed, interacting multimodal system in which information from
other systems, including the GI system, can modulate the taste of food.
multimodal system; visceral system; central nervous system; transduction
*
Fourth in a series of invited articles on Nutrient Tasting
and Signaling Mechanisms in the Gut.
