Linking peripheral taste processes to behavior.

The act of eating and drinking brings food-related chemicals into contact with taste cells. Activation of these taste cells, in turn, engages neural circuits in the central nervous system that help animals identify foods and fluids, determine what and how much to eat, and prepare the body for digestion and assimilation. Analytically speaking, these neural processes can be divided into at least three categories: stimulus identification, ingestive motivation, and digestive preparation. This review will discuss recent advances in peripheral gustatory mechanisms, primarily from rodent models, in the context of these three major categories of taste function.