Flavor recognition memory related activity of the posterior piriform cortex in adult and aged rats

Increased basolateral amygdala metabolic activity during flavor familiarization: an experimental study

BACKGROUND

Novel flavors elicit a cautious neophobic response which is attenuated as the flavor becomes familiar and safe. The attenuation of neophobia reveals the formation of a safe memory. Previous lesion studies in rats have reported that basolateral amygdala integrity is required for taste neophobia, but not neophobia to flavor, i.e., taste linked to an odorous component. Accordingly, immunohistochemical analyses show that novel tastes induced higher basolateral amygdala activity when compared to familiar ones. However, a different role of basolateral amygdala in flavor attenuation of neophobia is suggested by lesion studies using a vinegar solution. Studies assessing basolateral amygdala activity during flavor attenuation of neophobia are lacking. Thus, we quantified cytochrome oxidase as an index of basolateral amygdala activity along the first and second vinegar exposures in order to assess flavor neophobia and attenuation of neophobia.

METHODS

We exposed adult male Wistar rats either once or twice to a 3% cider vinegar solution or water, and compared the basolateral amygdala, piriform cortex and caudate putamen brain metabolic activity using cytochrome c-oxidase histochemistry.

RESULTS

We found increased flavor intake and cytochrome c-oxidase histochemistry activity during the second exposure in basolateral amygdala, but not in the piriform cortex and caudate/putamen.

CONCLUSIONS

The main finding of the study is that BLA metabolic activity was higher in the group exposed to a familiar vinegar solution than in the groups exposed to either water or a novel vinegar solution.

Prefrontal cortex activity patterns during taste neophobia habituation in adult and aged rats

Age-related memory decline has been associated with changes in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) function. In order to explore the role of mPFC in taste recognition memory, we have assessed mPFC c-Fos immunoreactivity in adult (5-month-old) and aged (24-month-old) male Wistar rats during the first (Novel), second (Familiar I), and sixth (Familiar II) exposure to a cider vinegar solution. Adult brains showed higher c-Fos expression in the ventral but not the dorsal region of mPFC during the second taste exposure. Interestingly, old brains exhibited an altered activity pattern selectively in the dorsal peduncular cortex (DP) which can be associated with a delayed attenuation of vinegar neophobia in this group. These results support the involvement of this area in the formation of safe taste memory. Further research is needed for understanding the role of DP in taste recognition memory and the impact of aging on it.

Taste Processing: Insights from Animal Models

Taste processing is an adaptive mechanism involving complex physiological, motivational and cognitive processes. Animal models have provided relevant data about the neuroanatomical and neurobiological components of taste processing. From these models, two important domains of taste responses are described in this review. The first part focuses on the neuroanatomical and neurophysiological bases of olfactory and taste processing. The second part describes the biological and behavioral characteristics of taste learning, with an emphasis on conditioned taste aversion as a key process for the survival and health of many species, including humans.

Cell-Type-Specific Whole-Brain Direct Inputs to the Anterior and Posterior Piriform Cortex

The piriform cortex (PC) is a key brain area involved in both processing and coding of olfactory information. It is implicated in various brain disorders, such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, and autism. The PC consists of the anterior (APC) and posterior (PPC) parts, which are different anatomically and functionally. However, the direct input networks to specific neuronal populations within the APC and PPC remain poorly understood. Here, we mapped the whole-brain direct inputs to the two major neuronal populations, the excitatory glutamatergic principal neurons and inhibitory γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-ergic interneurons within the APC and PPC using the rabies virus (RV)-mediated retrograde trans-synaptic tracing system. We found that for both types of neurons, APC and PPC share some similarities in input networks, with dominant inputs originating from the olfactory region (OLF), followed by the cortical subplate (CTXsp), isocortex, cerebral nuclei (CNU), hippocampal formation (HPF) and interbrain (IB), whereas the midbrain (MB) and hindbrain (HB) were rarely labeled. However, APC and PPC also show distinct features in their input distribution patterns. For both types of neurons, the input proportion from the OLF to the APC was higher than that to the PPC; while the PPC received higher proportions of inputs from the HPF and CNU than the APC did. Overall, our results revealed the direct input networks of both excitatory and inhibitory neuronal populations of different PC subareas, providing a structural basis to analyze the diverse PC functions.

Characterizing functional pathways of the human olfactory system

The central processing pathways of the human olfactory system are not fully understood. The olfactory bulb projects directly to a number of cortical brain structures, but the distinct networks formed by projections from each of these structures to the rest of the brain have not been well-defined. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and k-means clustering to parcellate human primary olfactory cortex into clusters based on whole-brain functional connectivity patterns. Resulting clusters accurately corresponded to anterior olfactory nucleus, olfactory tubercle, and frontal and temporal piriform cortices, suggesting dissociable whole-brain networks formed by the subregions of primary olfactory cortex. This result was replicated in an independent data set. We then characterized the unique functional connectivity profiles of each subregion, producing a map of the large-scale processing pathways of the human olfactory system. These results provide insight into the functional and anatomical organization of the human olfactory system.