de Araujo Ivan E T, Rolls Edmund T, Kringelbach Morten L, McGlone Francis, Phillips Nicola
University of Oxford, Department of Experimental Psychology, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK.
Eur J Neurosci. 2003 Oct;18(7):2059-68. doi: 10.1046/j.1460-9568.2003.02915.x.
The functional architecture of the central taste and olfactory systems in primates provides evidence that the convergence of taste and smell information onto single neurons is realized in the caudal orbitofrontal cortex (and immediately adjacent agranular insula). These higher-order association cortical areas thus support flavour processing. Much less is known, however, about homologous regions in the human cortex, or how taste-odour interactions, and thus flavour perception, are implemented in the human brain. We performed an event-related fMRI study to investigate where in the human brain these interactions between taste and odour stimuli (administered retronasally) may be realized. The brain regions that were activated by both taste and smell included parts of the caudal orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insular cortex and adjoining areas, and anterior cingulate cortex. It was shown that a small part of the anterior (putatively agranular) insula responds to unimodal taste and to unimodal olfactory stimuli, and that a part of the anterior frontal operculum is a unimodal taste area (putatively primary taste cortex) not activated by olfactory stimuli. Activations to combined olfactory and taste stimuli where there was little or no activation to either alone (providing positive evidence for interactions between the olfactory and taste inputs) were found in a lateral anterior part of the orbitofrontal cortex. Correlations with consonance ratings for the smell and taste combinations, and for their pleasantness, were found in a medial anterior part of the orbitofrontal cortex. These results provide evidence on the neural substrate for the convergence of taste and olfactory stimuli to produce flavour in humans, and where the pleasantness of flavour is represented in the human brain.
灵长类动物中枢味觉和嗅觉系统的功能结构表明，味觉和嗅觉信息在单个神经元上的汇聚是在尾侧眶额皮质（以及紧邻的无颗粒岛叶）实现的。这些高级联合皮质区域因此支持风味加工。然而，对于人类皮质中的同源区域，或者味觉与嗅觉的相互作用以及风味感知在人类大脑中是如何实现的，我们所知甚少。我们进行了一项事件相关功能磁共振成像研究，以探究在人类大脑中味觉和嗅觉刺激（经鼻后给予）之间的这些相互作用可能在哪里实现。被味觉和嗅觉同时激活的脑区包括尾侧眶额皮质、杏仁核、岛叶皮质及其相邻区域的部分，以及前扣带回皮质。结果表明，前岛叶（推测为无颗粒）的一小部分对单峰味觉和单峰嗅觉刺激有反应，并且额前盖的一部分是未被嗅觉刺激激活的单峰味觉区域（推测为初级味觉皮质）。在眶额皮质的外侧前部发现了对嗅觉和味觉联合刺激有激活，而对单独的嗅觉或味觉刺激几乎没有激活（为嗅觉和味觉输入之间的相互作用提供了阳性证据）的情况。在眶额皮质的内侧前部发现了与嗅觉和味觉组合的协和度评分及其愉悦度的相关性。这些结果为味觉和嗅觉刺激在人类中汇聚以产生风味的神经基础，以及人类大脑中风味愉悦度的表征位置提供了证据。
