An intra-oral flavor detection task in freely moving mice
Kazuki Shiotani,
Yuta Tanisumi,
Yuma Osako,
Koshi Murata,
Junya Hirokawa,
Yoshio Sakurai,
Hiroyuki Manabe
Affiliations
Kazuki Shiotani
Laboratory of Neural Information, Graduate School of Brain Science, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan; Laboratory of Brain Network Information, College of Life Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Shiga, Japan
Yuta Tanisumi
Laboratory of Neural Information, Graduate School of Brain Science, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan; Department of Anatomy and Molecular Cell Biology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan; Division of Multicellular Circuit Dynamics, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, National Institute of Natural Sciences, Nagoya, Japan; Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan
Yuma Osako
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
Koshi Murata
Division of Brain Structure and Function, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Fukui, Fukui, Japan
Junya Hirokawa
Laboratory of Neural Information, Graduate School of Brain Science, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan; Department of Functional Brain Imaging, National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Chiba, Japan
Yoshio Sakurai
Laboratory of Neural Information, Graduate School of Brain Science, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
Hiroyuki Manabe
Laboratory of Neural Information, Graduate School of Brain Science, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan; Department of Neurophysiology, Nara Medical University, Nara, Japan; Corresponding author
Summary: Flavor plays a critical role in the pleasure of food. Flavor research has mainly focused on human subjects and revealed that many brain regions are involved in flavor perception. However, animal models for elucidating the mechanisms of neural circuits are lacking. Herein, we demonstrate the use of a novel behavioral task in which mice are capable of flavor detection. When the olfactory pathways of the mice were blocked, they could not perform the task. However, behavioral accuracy was not affected when the gustatory pathway was blocked by benzocaine. These results indicate that the mice performed this detection task mainly based on the olfaction. We conclude that this novel task can contribute to research on the neural mechanisms of flavor perception.
