ReviewNeuroscience and biobehavioral reviews2008
The taste of sugars.
Review in Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Running Performance With Nutritive and Nonnutritive Sweetened Mouth Rinses.International journal of sports physiology and performance · 2017Trial
- Identification of Key Determinants for Perceived Sweetness and Sourness in Fresh Grapes.Food science & nutrition · 2026Article
- Boiling-Resistant Single-Chain Sweet Protein Monellin as a Safe and Effective Sugar Alternative for Metabolic and Glycemic Management in Mice.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Comparison of Gelatin Flavors for Oral Dosing of C57BL/6J and FVB/N Mice.Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS · 2022Article
- Variation in the geneAmerican journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology · 2021Article
- Article
- Sweet Taste Is Complex: Signaling Cascades and Circuits Involved in Sweet Sensation.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Review
- Ecological Sensing Through Taste and Chemosensation Mediates Inflammation: A Biological Anthropological Approach.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2020Review
- Exploring Anhedonia in Kennelled Dogs: Could Coping Styles Affect Hedonic Preferences for Sweet and Umami Flavours?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Article
- Atomistic mechanisms underlying the activation of the G protein-coupled sweet receptor heterodimer by sugar alcohol recognition.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Quantifying Sweet Taste Liker Phenotypes: Time for Some Consistency in the Classification Criteria.Nutrients · 2019Article
- The Central Role of Glucokinase in Glucose Homeostasis: A Perspective 50 Years After Demonstrating the Presence of the Enzyme in Islets of Langerhans.Frontiers in physiology · 2019Review
- Non-nutritive sweeteners possess a bacteriostatic effect and alter gut microbiota in mice.PloS one · 2018Article
- Article
- Genetics of taste receptors.Current pharmaceutical design · 2014Review
- Article
- Experience with sugar modifies behavioral but not taste-evoked medullary responses to sweeteners in mice.Chemical senses · 2013Article
- Genetics of sweet taste preferences.Flavour and fragrance journal · 2011Article
- Sweet taste signaling and the formation of memories of energy sources.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2011Article
- Nutrient regulation of enteroendocrine cellular activity linked to cholecystokinin gene expression and secretion.Journal of physiology and biochemistry · 2010Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Sugars evoke a distinctive perceptual quality ("sweetness" in humans) and are generally highly preferred. The neural basis for these phenomena is reviewed for rodents, in which detailed electrophysiological measurements have been made. A receptor has been identified that binds sweeteners and activates G-protein-mediated signaling in taste receptor cells, which leads to changes in neural firing rates in the brain, where perceptions of taste quality, intensity, and palatability are generated. Most cells in gustatory nuclei are broadly tuned, so quality perception presumably arises from patterns of activity across neural populations. However, some manipulations affect only the most sugar-oriented cells, making it useful to consider them as a distinct neural subtype. Quality perception may also arise partly due to temporal patterns of activity to sugars, especially within sugar-oriented cells that give large but delayed responses. Non-specific gustatory neurons that are excited by both sugars and unpalatable stimuli project to ventral forebrain areas, where neural responses provide a closer match with behavioral preferences. This transition likely involves opposing excitatory and inhibitory influences by different subgroups of gustatory cells. Sweeteners are generally preferred over water, but the strength of this preference can vary across time or between individuals, and higher preferences for sugars are often associated with larger taste-evoked responses.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.