Gustatory and multimodal neuronal responses in the amygdala during licking and discrimination of sensory stimuli in awake rats.

The amygdala (AM) receives information from various sensory modalities via the neocortex and directly from the thalamus and brain stem and plays an important role in ingestive behaviors. In the present study, neuronal activity was recorded in the AM and amygdalostriatal transition area of rats during discrimination of conditioned sensory stimuli and ingestion of sapid solutions. Of the 420 responsive neurons, 227 responded exclusively to one sensory modality, 120 responded to two or more modalities, and the remaining 73 could not be classified. Among the responsive neurons, 108 responded to oral-sensory stimulation (oral-sensory neurons). In detailed analyses of 84 of these oral-sensory neurons, 24 were classified as taste responsive and were located mainly in the central nucleus of the AM. The other 60 oral-sensory neurons were classified as nontaste oral-sensory neurons and were distributed widely throughout the AM. Both the taste and nontaste oral-sensory neurons also responded to other sensory stimuli. Of the 24 taste neurons, 21 were tested at least with four standard taste solutions. On the basis of the magnitudes of their responses to these sapid stimuli, the taste neurons were classified as follows: seven sucrose-best, four NaCl-best, three citric acid-best, and six quinine HCl-best. The remaining cell responded significantly only to lysine HCl and monosodium glutamate. Multivariate analyses of these 21 taste neurons suggested that, in the AM, taste quality was processed based on palatability. Taken with previous lesion studies, the present results suggest that the AM plays a role in the evaluation of taste palatability and in the association of taste stimuli with other sensory stimuli.