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| Poster #172 The Ingestive Response Reflects Neural Dynamics in the Gustatory Cortex |
| Natasha Baas-Thomas, Abuzar Mahmood, Kathleen Maigler, Yixi Wang, Donald B. Katz Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, United States |
When a taste stimulus reaches the tongue, the gustatory system has one basic goal - to determine whether that stimulus should be consumed or expelled from the mouth. Rats exhibit stereotyped and distinct orofacial movements that reflect the hedonic value of a tastant. The primary aversive-related orofacial movement, gapes, is easily detected experimentally which has led several studies to investigate the neural signals driving the rejection of a tastant. In this study, we aim to better understand the signals guiding and reflecting the decision to ingest a palatable tastant. We developped a machine learning classifier capable of discriminating individual aversive and ingestive-related orofacial movements from electromyographic (EMG) activity of the jaw opener (anterior digastric) muscle. Our findings indicate that mouth movements associated with ingestion can be further divided into distinct subtypes. We analyzed the timing of these behavioral subtypes relative to neural activity in the primary gustatory cortex (GC), where taste responses transition through three firing-rate “epochs”. The transition to the late epoch has previously been shown to modulate the onset of gaping, and preliminary results indicate a similar correlation between GC dynamics and the ingestive-related mouth movements. These insights deepen our understanding of how sensory information in the GC is transformed into context-appropriate motor outputs. |