Gustatory responses in the nucleus tractus solitarius of the alert XXXX .

@entity1 @entity1219 @entity5434 @entity4807 @entity5828 @entity413
Multiunit and single neuron responses to taste stimuli in the nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) of alert @entity5434 were analyzed. Intensity-response functions, including neural thresholds to @entity413 and @entity4807 @entity5828 , agreed well with psychophysical reports, implying that the @entity5434 and @entity1 share the same dynamic range of sensitivity to prototypical taste stimuli. The NTS is chemotopically organized: neurons most responsive to @entity5828 are more common in the posterior gustatory area, whereas those most responsive to @entity413 and @entity1219 are located in the anterior NTS. Responsiveness to @entity4807 is more widely distributed but tends toward the anterior. Efforts were made to determine if neurons could be divided into a discrete number of types, as determined by their sensitivities to the prototypical stimuli. The clearest distinction was between those that did or did not respond well to @entity5828 . Beyond this, neuronal categories were not obvious. Individual neurons were quite broadly sensitive to our stimulus array, so that, for the typical NTS cell, no one of the four prototypes evoked a majority of the discharges. This extreme breadth of tuning suggests that taste-quality information in the monkey might be incorporated in relative discharge rates across the neuron population. Correlations among patterns of activity to the four prototypical stimuli indicated that only @entity5828 and @entity4807 @entity5828 have closely related taste qualities.
