Responsiveness of dog thalamic neurons to taste stimulation of various tongue regions.
Receptive fields of single thalamic taste neurons in dogs were studied by examining responses to stimuli representing the four basic taste qualities applied to five different regions on the tongue surface. Twenty single thalamic units responded to taste stimulation of the tongue ipsilateral to the recording site were classified into three types according to characteristics of their receptive fields. In 11 out of 20 units, the location and the size of the receptive field and the most sensitive region in the receptive field did not vary among their effective taste stimuli (type A units). In 5 units, the location and the size of the receptive field varied with taste stimulus, although the most sensitive region was common to the stimuli (type B units). In the remaining 4 units, the most sensitive region varied with taste stimulus (type C units).
D000344:Afferent Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004285:Dogs; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D005073:Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D013649:Taste / Q000502:physiology*; D013652:Taste Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D013787:Thalamic Nuclei / Q000502:physiology*; D014059:Tongue / Q000294:innervation*