Premium
Insular cortex lesions fail to block flavor and taste preference learning in rats
Author(s) -
Touzani Khalid,
Sclafani Anthony
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2007.05798.x
Subject(s) - taste , insular cortex , flavor , psychology , extinction (optical mineralogy) , ibotenic acid , conditioning , associative learning , neuroscience , preference , chemistry , cognitive psychology , food science , central nervous system , mineralogy , statistics , mathematics , economics , microeconomics
The role of the insular cortex (IC) in learning to associate orosensory cues with the oral and post‐oral properties of carbohydrate was examined. Rats with either small (gustatory region) or large (gustatory and visceral regions) ibotenic acid lesions of the IC learned to prefer flavors (Experiments 1 and 3) and taste mixtures (Experiments 2 and 4) paired with intragastric infusions of maltodextrin. The rats with large IC lesions also learned a preference for a flavor cue paired with the sweet taste of fructose (Experiment 5). In fact, they showed enhanced conditioning and retarded extinction compared with controls. Collectively, these data provided no evidence that IC is essential for flavor preference learning based on associations between the orosensory cues and the oral and post‐oral reinforcing properties of nutrients.