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Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UD, England
| ABSTRACT |
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KEY WORDS: taste cortex orbitofrontal cortex insular cortex glutamate umami primates nucleotide olfaction
| INTRODUCTION |
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In the orbitofrontal cortex of primates, there is a region of secondary
taste cortex in which neurons are activated by the taste of food
(Baylis et al. 1994
, Rolls et al. 1990
,
Rolls 1989
, 1995
and 1997
). These orbitofrontal taste
neurons can be tuned quite finely to gustatory stimuli (Rolls et al. 1990
). Moreover, their activity is related to food reward,
in that those that respond to the taste of food do so only if the
monkey is hungry (Rolls et al. 1989
). These neurons show
effects of sensory-specific satiety, an important mechanism in the
control of feeding (Rolls 1989
, 1994
, 1995
and 1997
,
Rolls et al. 1989
, Rolls and Rolls 1997
).
This region is implicated in the control of feeding because it is the
first part of the taste system of primates in which neuronal responses
to the taste of food occur when hunger exists, but not after satiation
(Rolls et al. 1989
, Rolls 1989
, 1995
and
1997
).
The orbitofrontal cortex also contains neurons with multimodal
representations, for example, neurons that respond to olfactory and
taste stimuli, or to visual and taste stimuli (Rolls 1989
, 1995
and 1997
, Rolls and Baylis 1994
). A neuronal
representation of flavor appears to be formed in the orbitofrontal
cortex. Approximately 40% of the olfactory neurons in the
orbitofrontal cortex have activity that depends on the association of
the olfactory input with a taste reward, in that some categorize odors
depending on whether they are associated with glucose or saline in an
olfactory discrimination task (Critchley and Rolls 1996a
, Rolls et al. 1996b
). Moreover, these
olfactory responses may be modified during the reversal of this
olfactory discrimination task (Rolls et al. 1996a
). The
responses of some of these orbitofrontal cortex olfactory and visual
neurons are also modulated by hunger and contribute to
sensory-specific satiety (Critchley and Rolls 1996b
,
see also Rolls and Rolls 1997
).
The orbitofrontal cortex is thus a region that is involved in taste,
olfactory and flavor information processing in nonhuman primates. Using
functional magnetic resonance imaging, we have also demonstrated the
existence of corresponding taste and olfactory regions in the human
orbitofrontal cortex (Francis et al. 1999
, Rolls et al. 1997
).
An important food taste that appears to be different from that produced
by sweet, salt, bitter or sour is the taste of protein. At least part
of this taste is captured by the Japanese word umami, which is a taste
common to a diversity of food sources including fish, meats, mushrooms,
cheese and some vegetables including tomatoes. Within these food
sources, it is the synergistic combination of glutamates and
5'-nucleotides that creates the umami taste (Ikeda 1909
,
Yamaguchi 1967
, Yamaguchi and Kimizuka 1979
). Monosodium L-glutamate (MSG), GMP and
inosine 5'-monophosphate (IMP) are examples of umami stimuli.
Umami does not act by enhancing the tastes of sweetness, saltiness,
bitterness or sourness in foods, but instead may be a flavor in its own
right, at least in humans. For example, Yamaguchi (1967)
found that the presence of MSG or IMP did not lower the thresholds for
the prototypical tastes (produced by sucrose, NaCl, quinine sulfate and
tartaric acid), suggesting that umami did not improve the detection
sensitivity for the four basic taste qualities. Also, the detection
thresholds for MSG were not lowered in the presence of the prototypical
taste stimuli. This suggests that the receptor sites for umami
substances are different from those for other prototypical stimuli
(Yamaguchi and Kimizuka 1979
). (A synergistic effect was
found when IMP was added to MSG in that the detection threshold for MSG
was dramatically lowered.) Yamaguchi and Kimizuka (1979)
tested the "singularity" of umami by presenting human subjects with
21 taste stimuli including single and mixture solutions of MSG and
sucrose, NaCl, tartaric acid and quinine sulfate. The subjects sorted
the stimuli on the basis of taste quality similarity. These scores were
placed into a similarity matrix and analyzed using multidimensional
scaling procedures. The results revealed that, within a
three-dimensional tetrahedron, the four prototypical stimuli were
located at the vertices of a tetrahedron. The mixtures, containing two,
three or four prototypical stimuli, were located on the edges or
surfaces of the tetrahedron. However, MSG was located outside of the
tetrahedron, implying that the taste of umami is qualitatively
different from the four prototypical stimuli used. In spite of this
perceptual distinctiveness, traditional taste-quality descriptors
are frequently used in describing the quality evoked by monosodium
glutamate, particularly saltiness (OMahoney and Ishii 1987
, Zwillinger and Halpern 1991
).
| Neurons responsive to the taste of monosodium glutamate |
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| Glutamic acid |
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To test how similarly the whole population of 70 cells responded to the
two umami tastants, MSG and glutamic acid, compared with other stimuli,
we computed the correlations of the responses of all 70 cells to each
pair of stimuli out of monosodium glutamate (M), glutamic acid (GLA),
glucose (G), sodium chloride (N), acid (H) and quinine (Q). The Pearson
correlation coefficients are shown in Table 1
. It can be seen from Table 1
that the correlation between the responses
of this population of neurons to M and GLA was 0.75; this similarity
was greater than most other correlations between stimuli shown in Table 1
and was higher than the correlation of glutamic acid with any other
stimulus. (The other somewhat high correlation of glutamic acid with
another tastant was 0.71 with HCl, a finding consistent with the fact
that both are acidic, and that some neurons in the population reflect
the acidity of tastants.)
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| Inosine monophosphate |
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The set of tastants, 1.0 mol/L glucose (G), 0.1 mol/L NaCl (N), 0.01
mol/L HCl (H), 0.001 mol/L QHCl (Q), 0.1 mol/L MSG (M), and 0.0001
mol/L IMP, was tested in random sequence, as described above. This
concentration of IMP is small, but was chosen because it was found in
our preliminary studies to be effective in producing neuronal responses
in macaques; it is just below the human detection threshold for IMP
alone (Yamaguchi 1967
) but is a concentration that
appears to affect the human taste system, in that it produces a taste
synergism with MSG.
It was possible to complete the testing for 18 cells (Rolls et al. 1996c
). It was found that some of the cells had responses
to concentrations as low as 0.0001 mol/L of IMP; typically, the cells
that responded to IMP also responded to MSG.
Across this set of 18 cells, the correlations between IMP and the other
stimuli calculated from the response profiles are shown in Table 2
. The results show that across the population of cells, IMP produced
responses that were much more similar to M than to any of the other
tastants (Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.80).
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| Satiety |
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Cells that responded to the taste of MSG or to the sight of food (see
Rolls and Baylis 1994
, Thorpe et al. 1983
) were tested before, during and after feeding a monkey 0.1
mol/L MSG until behavioral satiety was achieved. Satiety was induced by
feeding the monkey 0.1 mol/L MSG rapidly while recording the behavioral
acceptance as a function of volume consumed. The responses of cells
were measured at varying stages in the delivery of the satiating
solution and after the monkey was satiated.
It was possible to perform experiments studying the effect of satiety
on taste responses to glutamate on five neurons (Rolls et al. 1996c
). The responses of one of these neurons during feeding to
satiety are shown in Figure 2
. The response to the taste of glutamate decreased from a value of 19.5
spikes/s when the monkey was hungry to a value of 9.1 spikes/s when the
monkey was satiated. A similar reduction was not found for the other
tastants, and indeed the response to the taste of glucose increased
(see Fig. 2
). There was a significant interaction between the responses
to the different tastants and feeding to satiety (two-way ANOVA,
P < 0.01, F(1,46) = 9 .8). In two of the other
four taste neurons also tested in this way, there was a generalized
decrease in the response to MSG and to the other tastants. A larger
volume of satiating fluid was used in both cases (125 and 200 mL), and
this may account for the non-sensoryspecific modulation of
responsiveness in these cells.
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| Umami flavor produced by a combination of taste and olfactory inputs |
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The fact that the taste of glutamate and the smell of a savory food can
activate the same orbitofrontal cortex neuron is documented in
Figure 3
. This neuron responded well to both the taste of 0.1 mol/L MSG (M) and
to the odor of salmon or onion (Rolls and Baylis 1994
).
This type of convergence onto different orbitofrontal cortex neurons
was found in a number of cases (Critchley and Rolls 1996a
, Rolls and Baylis 1994
). Such
corresponding olfactory and taste responses are likely to be built in
the brain at least in part by olfactory to taste association learning,
as demonstrated by Rolls et al. (1996a)
.
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The results of this experiment on four experienced subjects are shown
in Figure 4
. For clarity, the results with no odor and with 10 µL/L
methyl furyl disulfide are shown on the graph. It can be seen that
there is an approximately additive effect of the 10 µL/L
methyl furyl disulfide odor and the MSG in producing the flavor of
umami. A two-way ANOVA showed highly significant effects of both
MSG (F3,176 = 119, P << 0.001) and
methyl furyl disulfide (F3,176 = 11.3,
P < 0.001), and no significant interaction term
(P = 0.3).
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| DISCUSSION |
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The results of the psychophysical experiment described here suggest that part of the way in which MSG is effective is that in combination with appropriate odorants, it produces a full umami flavor.
| FOOTNOTES |
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2 Supported by Medical Research Council Programme
Grant 8513790 to E.T.R. and by a grant from the International Glutamate
Technical Committee. ![]()
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