How the Taste Bud Translates Between Tongue and Brain (original) (raw)
Science|How the Taste Bud Translates Between Tongue and Brain
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- Aug. 4, 1992
Credit...The New York Times Archives
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August 4, 1992
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Section C, Page
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WHILE shrimp barbecued in a tangy marinade may provide your taste buds with a burst of simple delight, researchers who study the workings of individual taste cells have recently shown that those sensory organs are far from simple. Such a dish would send the taste buds into overdrive as they raced through a series of recently discovered biophysical reactions to process the complex seasonings even before you swallowed the first bite.
The information gleaned from taste-cell studies, mainly on animals like the mudpuppy and catfish, is expected to lead eventually to many tangible benefits. These include modifying people's "taste appetites" to aid in weight control, make dull, nutritious foods taste better, improve the taste perceptions and appetites of the elderly, produce tastier substitutes for sugars and salt, and develop drugs to counter taste disorders.
Contrary to long-held beliefs, the new studies reveal taste buds to be far more than simple conduits that immediately pass on information about sweet, sour, salty and bitter substances to the brain to tell you what you are eating and help you decide whether you want more. Rather, the research has shown that cells in the taste buds communicate with each other, actively accepting, rejecting and modifying taste stimuli through a complicated network of chemical and electrical signals before sending signals to the brain.
As scientists scramble to decipher those signals, they are finding that taste stimuli can affect the taste-bud cells in unexpected ways. The stimuli sometimes exert their effect by interacting with messenger molecules in the taste buds, and they sometimes directly stimulate tiny electrical currents within the cells.
For example, researchers at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology in Nutley, N.J., recently published their identification of an important protein messenger in taste buds, gustducin, that is activated in response to all sweet and some bitter taste stimuli. Dr. Robert F. Margolskee and his colleagues at the institute said gustducin's role in taste buds was comparable to that of protein receptors called transducins in the eye. Transducins, which are far better studied messenger chemicals, help to translate the light that reaches the retina into messages to be sent to the brain. Gustducin, which is found only in taste buds, acts as an intermediary between the receptor molecule for sweet stimuli and a chain of subsequent steps, finally sending a message to the brain that something sweet has been tasted.
"Taste research has not been a high-priority item with our major funding agency, the National Institutes of Health," said Dr. Stephen D. Roper, a neurobiologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, "although this may change now that connections have been established between taste and the control of food intake."
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