ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2020
Taste Quality Representation in the Human Brain.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
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Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 120 citations in OpenAlex.
- Domain-General Neural Effects of Associative Learning and Expectations on Pain and Hedonic Taste Perception.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Trial
- Sex differences in central insulin action: Effect of intranasal insulin on neural food cue reactivity in adults with normal weight and overweight.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2022Trial
- Cortical Oxygenation Changes during Gastric Tube Feeding in Moderate- and Late-Preterm Babies: A NIRS Study.Nutrients · 2021Trial
- A large-scale heterogeneous 3D magnetic resonance brain imaging dataset for self-supervised learning.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Exploring cannabinoid receptor CB1 autophagy and the obesity phenotype of p62-deficient mice.Biochemistry and biophysics reports · 2026Article
- Mendelian randomization analyses support causal relationships between COVID-19 and changes in brain structure and function.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- The role of the caudate nucleus in taste function: a comprehensive narrative review.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
- Savoring Satiety: An Exploratory Analysis of the Neural Correlates of Sensory-Specific Satiety.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Tastes and retronasal odours evoke a shared flavour-specific neural code in the human insula.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Neural Mechanisms and Alterations of Sweet Sensing: Insights from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Separating Subjective from Objective Food Value in the Human Insula: An Exploratory Study Using Intracranial EEG.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Shared subcortical arousal systems across sensory modalities during transient modulation of attention.NeuroImage · 2025Article
- Gustatory-Visual Interaction in Human Brain Cortex: fNIRS Study.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Perceptual Dysfunction in Eating Disorders.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- The Insular Cortex: An Interface Between Sensation, Emotion and Cognition.Neuroscience bulletin · 2024Review
- Shared subcortical arousal systems across sensory modalities during transient modulation of attention.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- The effect of multisensory context and experience on flavor preference decisions in rats.Physiology & behavior · 2024Article
- Influence of insulin sensitivity on food cue evoked functional brain connectivity in children.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Mental health problems raise the odds of cognitive impairment in COVID-19 survivors.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In the mammalian brain, the insula is the primary cortical substrate involved in the perception of taste. Recent imaging studies in rodents have identified a "gustotopic" organization in the insula, whereby distinct insula regions are selectively responsive to one of the five basic tastes. However, numerous studies in monkeys have reported that gustatory cortical neurons are broadly-tuned to multiple tastes, and tastes are not represented in discrete spatial locations. Neuroimaging studies in humans have thus far been unable to discern between these two models, though this may be because of the relatively low spatial resolution used in taste studies to date. In the present study, we examined the spatial representation of taste within the human brain using ultra-high resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at high magnetic field strength (7-tesla). During scanning, male and female participants tasted sweet, salty, sour, and tasteless liquids, delivered via a custom-built MRI-compatible tastant-delivery system. Our univariate analyses revealed that all tastes (vs tasteless) activated primary taste cortex within the bilateral dorsal mid-insula, but no brain region exhibited a consistent preference for any individual taste. However, our multivariate searchlight analyses were able to reliably decode the identity of distinct tastes within those mid-insula regions, as well as brain regions involved in affect and reward, such as the striatum, orbitofrontal cortex, and amygdala. These results suggest that taste quality is not represented topographically, but by a distributed population code, both within primary taste cortex as well as regions involved in processing the hedonic and aversive properties of taste.
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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.