A research group led by Associate Professor Kenichiro Nakajima of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences of the National Institute of Natural Sciences and Associate Professor Takumi Misaka of the Graduate School of Agriculture and Life Sciences of the University of Tokyo has nerve cells that selectively transmit sweetness and the comfort that accompanies it in mice. I found that I would do it.
Taste is an important sensation that serves as a criterion for the value of food, such as actively ingesting nutrient-rich and favorable foods and avoiding harmful ingredients.Taste information is recognized by relaying multiple relay points in the brain starting from the tongue, but the neural mechanism that conveys taste in the brain is not well understood.
In this study, we searched for taste-transmitting nerves in the brain stem, which is an important relay point for taste information transmission, using a mouse as a model.As a result, we discovered that there are nerves that selectively convey sweetness information in the brain of mice.
It is also clear that when this nerve disappears, the sweetness is not normally felt, and that artificial activation of the activity of this nerve causes the comfort associated with the sweetness even when the solution is not ingested. Became.More than 40 years have passed since the presence of taste-responsive nerves was reported in the paranuclear pons of mice, but this study is the first to succeed in identifying taste-transmitting nerves in the mammalian brain.
It is expected that this result will be useful not only for quantitatively evaluating sweetness, but also for quantitatively evaluating the modifying effect and deliciousness of other tastes on sweetness.
Paper information:[Cell Reports] Sat B2-expressing Neurons in the Parabrachial Nucleus Encode Sweet Taste
