Perceptual and Neural Responses to Sweet Taste in Humans and Rodents

Introduction This mini-review discusses some of the parallels between rodent neurophysiological and human psychophysical data concerning temperature effects on sweet taste. Methods and Purpose Sweet is an innately rewarding taste sensation that is associated in part with foods that contain calories in the form of sugars. Humans and other mammals show unconditioned preference for select sweet stimuli. Such preference is poised to influence diet selection and, in turn, nutritional status, which underscores the importance of delineating the physiological mechanisms for sweet taste with respect to their influence on human health. Advances in our knowledge of the biology of sweet taste in humans have arisen in part through studies on mechanisms of gustatory processing in rodent models. Along this line, recent work has revealed there are operational parallels in neural systems for sweet taste between mice and humans, as indexed by similarities in the effects of temperature on central neurophysiological and psychophysical responses to sucrose in these species. Such association strengthens the postulate that rodents can serve as effective models of particular mechanisms of appetitive taste processing. Data supporting this link are discussed here, as are rodent and human data that shed light on relationships between mechanisms for sweet taste and ingestive disorders, such as alcohol abuse. Results and Conclusions Rodent models have utility for understanding mechanisms of taste processing that may pertain to human flavor perception. Importantly, there are limitations to generalizing data from rodents, albeit parallels across species do exist.