Makoto Sugita
Professor,Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences,Hiroshima University

Sweet and bitter taste stimuli evoke contrastive behavioral and emotional responses.

Therefore, the gustatory system provides us with a precious model to understand the general neuronal mechanisms of cognition, behavioral responses such as aversion and attraction, and also emotional responses.

The specific aim in the present study is to clarify the cellular and molecular aspects underlying the linkage of taste inputs to contrastive behavioral and emotional responses by employing genetic tracing of taste neuronal circuitries for sweet and bitter in combination with functional characterization of the specific neurons in the circuitries.