Geran Laura C, Spector Alan C
College of Dentistry, The Ohio State University, Ohio, USA.
Behav Neurosci. 2007 Aug;121(4):779-85. doi: 10.1037/0735-7044.121.4.779.
In spite of its common use as a standard stimulus in peripheral nerve recordings, relatively little is known about the psychophysics of NH-sub-4Cl taste. Rats' detection threshold for this salt was tested under a variety of conditions, including amiloride (100 muM) treatment and bilateral chorda tympani (CT) nerve transection. Detectability was measured with a 2-lever operant discrimination procedure used previously to measure detection thresholds for NaCl and KCl. Although NH-sub-4Cl and KCl appear to share a common taste quality and transduction mechanism, the logistic function and threshold for NH-sub-4Cl were found to be more similar to those of NaCl than to those of KCl. Like that of KCl, however, the detection threshold for NH4Cl increased significantly with CT transection (0.54 log-sub-1-sub-0 units, p < .004), but not with amiloride adulteration. This finding supports the hypothesis that the CT is necessary for normal salt detection regardless of stimulus, and suggests that amiloride does not appreciably impact responses to nonsodium salts at the behavioral level.
尽管氯化铵作为外周神经记录中的标准刺激物被广泛使用，但关于氯化铵味觉的心理物理学却知之甚少。在包括氨氯吡咪（100 μM）处理和双侧鼓索神经横断等多种条件下，测试了大鼠对这种盐的检测阈值。使用先前用于测量氯化钠和氯化钾检测阈值的双杠杆操作性辨别程序来测量可检测性。尽管氯化铵和氯化钾似乎具有共同的味觉特性和转导机制，但发现氯化铵的逻辑函数和阈值与氯化钠的更相似，而与氯化钾的不同。然而，与氯化钾一样，氯化铵的检测阈值在鼓索神经横断后显著增加（0.54 log₁₀单位，p <.004），但在氨氯吡咪掺杂时没有增加。这一发现支持了这样的假设，即无论刺激物如何，鼓索神经对于正常的盐检测都是必要的，并且表明氨氯吡咪在行为水平上不会明显影响对非钠盐的反应。
