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Taste perception in patients with insular cortex lesions.

T C Pritchard1, D A Macaluso, P J Eslinger

  • 1Department of Behavioral Science, The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey 17033, USA. tcpl@psu.edu

Behavioral Neuroscience
|September 24, 1999
PubMed
Summary

The primary taste cortex is in the insula. Left insula damage impairs taste recognition on both sides of the tongue, suggesting bilateral taste processing.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Gustatory Neuroscience
  • Human Brain Mapping

Background:

  • The primary taste cortex is hypothesized to be in the human rostrodorsal insula, based on nonhuman primate research.
  • Understanding the precise neural correlates of taste perception is crucial for diagnosing and treating gustatory disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of the insula in human taste perception.
  • To determine if taste information processing is lateralized or bilateral within the insula.

Main Methods:

  • Qualitative and quantitative taste perception assessments were conducted on patients with unilateral insula damage, extra-insular brain damage, and healthy controls.
  • Subjects identified taste quality and intensity applied to the left and right anterior tongue.

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Main Results:

  • Right insula damage resulted in ipsilateral deficits in taste recognition and intensity.
  • Left insula damage caused ipsilateral taste intensity deficits but bilateral taste recognition deficits.
  • Taste recognition deficits on the right tongue side in left insula stroke patients were unexpected.

Conclusions:

  • The findings support the insula as a key area for primary taste processing in humans.
  • Taste information from both sides of the tongue appears to be processed bilaterally by the left insula.
  • This suggests a more complex, potentially asymmetric, neural organization for taste than previously assumed.