Presentation Details
Aging Decreases Behavioral Preferences for Salts, but not for Sucrose, and Alters the Ultrastructural Morphology of Fungiform Taste Pores in Mice

Kolbe M Sussman, Joseph M Breza.

Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA

Abstract


Previously, we showed that rat chorda tympani nerve responses and ultrastructural characteristics of fungiform taste pores changed with age. The effects of aging on the taste system in mice, the preferred model for chemosensory research, has been largely unstudied. The aim of this study was to examine whether aged mice had differences in taste preferences to sucrose, NaCl, and NH4Cl, and whether they had differences in ultrastructural characteristics of fungiform taste pores using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Thirty-minute two-bottle preference tests indicated that preferences for NaCl and NH4Cl, but not sucrose, were significantly different in aged mice (16-17 months old) relative to young mice (5 months old). In the same animals, we found that the aged group had a significantly lower percentage of fungiform papilla with taste pores present. Microvilli of taste bud cells extend into the taste pores of fungiform papillae. The absence of a taste pore on fungiform papillae strongly suggests that taste stimuli cannot interact with taste bud cells beneath the epithelial surface and consequently decrease taste nerve activity. These findings are consistent with our recent findings in rats, where advanced aging had a significant impact on the magnitude of chorda tympani responses to salt and ultrastructural characteristics of fungiform taste pores. Collectively, these data suggest that aging significantly affects fungiform taste pore morphology and has a significant impact on taste processing. While the morphological changes at the level of the fungiform taste pore in aged mice are might have played a role in differences in behavioral taste preferences to salt stimuli, it is possible that changes in central taste processing occur as well.

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