Benign Taste Experience Enhances Cortical Response Reliability during Aversion Conditioning Towards a Novel Taste.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Sensory Processing
• Learning and Memory

Background:

• Taste learning, such as conditioned taste aversion (CTA), is influenced by prior experience.
• Benign taste experiences can paradoxically enhance subsequent CTA to a novel taste in rodents.
• Previous work showed taste experience increases gustatory cortex (GC) response discriminability.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate the neural mechanisms underlying enhanced CTA following benign taste experience.
• Examine how taste experience impacts GC processing dynamics, including single-neuron and ensemble activity.
• Determine if benign taste experience alters cortical response reliability in GC.

Main Methods:

• Used *in-vivo* electrophysiology in freely behaving female Long-Evans rats.
• Recorded GC neural activity during benign taste exposure and subsequent CTA conditioning.
• Analyzed single-neuron response variability and ensemble response coherence.

Main Results:

• Benign taste experience reduced single-neuron response variability in GC to novel tastes.
• Ensemble GC responses to novel tastes showed enhanced coherence after benign experience.
• Differences in GC responses pre- and post-CTA were amplified following benign taste exposure.

Conclusions:

• Benign taste experience enhances CTA by increasing the reliability of taste coding in the GC.
• Reduced response variability and enhanced ensemble coherence contribute to this effect.
• Findings suggest taste experience profoundly impacts cortical plasticity in chemosensory processing.