Abstract
The “nature” of umami – i.e., whether it should be considered a “basic taste” or a “mixture” of sweet and salty – has been a source of controversy among chemosensory neuroscientists. We decided to approach this problem by observing the firing of Gustatory Cortical (GC) neurons, which is well known for processing the physical properties and palatabilities of tastes, to sucrose (0.1M), NaCl (0.1M), MSG (0.1M), and a mixture of sucrose (0.1M) and NaCl (0.1M). We hypothesized that if umami is a mixture, then responses to MSG should pattern similarly to that of the sucrose/NaCl mix. Our results suggest that GC neurons process MSG and mixtures similarly in terms of both individual and population coding.