Electrophysiological Representation of Taste Memory

Excerpt

The taste of food can be memorized after single or repetitive exposures to it, especially when the intake is associated with pleasant or unpleasant consequences to the body. The memory of taste is an important physiological function for organisms, especially for omnivorous animals to expand their repertories of edibles on the bases of their tastes. After acquiring such gustatory memories, we can anticipate the taste of food simply by looking at it. Gustatory memories enable us to generate hallucinations of tastes in the absence of peripheral gustatory inputs. Signals evoked by recalling gustatory memories as well as those from the peripheral gustatory system may play important roles in gustatory information processing. One of the most convenient and effective methods that enable the animals to remember tastes is the conditioned taste aversion (CTA) paradigm. CTA is a kind of fear learning established on the basis of association of the quality of the taste of food and post-ingestional malaise.