The quintessence of an individual’s taste is her aesthetic sensibility and system of preferences. Online social network profiles, such as those appearing on Friendster and MySpace, are a veritable “show and tell” for taste—allowing individuals to perform acts of taste by declaring their favorite books, what music they love, and what their passions are. By mining these social network profiles en...

Taste receptors on the left and right sides of the anterior tongue are innervated by chorda tympani (CT) fibers, which carry taste information to the ipsilateral nucleus of the solitary tract (NST). Although the anterior tongue is essential for taste, patients with unilateral CT nerve damage often report no subjective change in their taste experience. The standing theory that explains the taste...

Taste bud volume increases over the postnatal period to match the number of neurons providing innervation. To clarify age-related changes in fungiform taste bud volume, the current study investigated developmental changes in taste bud cell number, proliferation rate, and life span. Taste bud growth can largely be accounted for by addition of cytokeratin-19-positive taste bud cells. Examination ...

Taste-masking techniques are applied to mask or overcome the bitter or unpleasant taste of active pharmaceutical ingredients/drugs to achieve patient acceptability and compliance. Oral administration of bitter or unpleasant tasting drugs is often the biggest barrier for patient groups, such as pediatrics and geriatrics.1 A survey of American Association of Pediatricians reports unpleasant taste...

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor and neurotrophin-4 are required for normal taste bud development. Although these neurotrophins normally function via the tyrosine kinase receptor, trkB, they also bind to the pan-neurotrophin receptor, p75. The goal of the present study was to determine whether the p75 receptor is required for the development or maintenance of a full complement of adult taste b...

OBJECTIVE Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) frequently complain of a diminished sense of smell. Less frequently, they may complain of taste impairment. In the present study, we investigated the symptoms, frequency, and severity of taste impairment as well as smell impairment in PD patients and compared the results with those of age- and sex-matched healthy controls. PATIENTS AND METHODS ...

It is becoming increasingly clear that the brain processes sensory stimuli differently according to whether they are passively or actively acquired, and these differences can be seen early in the sensory pathway. In the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS), the first relay in the central gustatory neuraxis, a rich variety of sensory inputs generated by active licking converge. Here, we show that...

It has been hypothesized that taste buds are induced by contact with developing cranial nerve fibers late in embryonic development, since descriptive studies indicate that during embryonic development taste cell differentiation occurs concomitantly with or slightly following the advent of innervation. However, experimental evidence delineating the role of innervation in taste bud development is...

Five fundamental taste qualities (sweet, bitter, salty, sour, umami) are sensed by dedicated taste cells (TCs) that relay quality information to gustatory nerve fibers. In peripheral taste signaling pathways, ATP has been identified as a functional neurotransmitter, but it remains to be determined how specificity of different taste qualities is maintained across synapses. Recent studies demonst...

We demonstrate a ligand-specific induction of endocytosis in cells of juvenile brown trout taste buds. The process is fast, massive and selective, as only a few cells in each taste buds are stained by exposure of the oral cavity to the taste stimulant l-cysteine together with a dye at 20 degrees C. Low temperature (+2 degrees C) and disruption of microtubules with nocodazole caused a substantia...