Department of Neurobiology and Behavior and Graduate Program in Neuroscience, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794, United States.
Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2012 Aug;22(4):709-16. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2012.04.001. Epub 2012 May 1.
The insular cortex is the primary cortical site devoted to taste processing. A large body of evidence is available for how insular neurons respond to gustatory stimulation in both anesthetized and behaving animals. Most of the reports describe broadly tuned neurons that are involved in processing the chemosensory, physiological and psychological aspects of gustatory experience. However little is known about how these neural responses map onto insular circuits. Particularly mysterious is the functional role of the three subdivisions of the insular cortex: the granular, the dysgranular and the agranular insular cortices. In this article we review data on the organization of the local and long-distance circuits in the three subdivisions. The functional significance of these results is discussed in light of the latest electrophysiological data. A view of the insular cortex as a functionally integrated system devoted to processing gustatory, multimodal, cognitive and affective information is proposed.
岛叶皮层是主要的皮质区域，专门用于味觉处理。有大量证据表明，在麻醉和行为动物中，岛叶神经元如何对味觉刺激做出反应。大多数报告描述了广泛调谐的神经元，它们参与处理味觉体验的化学感觉、生理和心理方面。然而，对于这些神经反应如何映射到岛叶回路，我们知之甚少。特别神秘的是岛叶皮层的三个细分部分的功能作用：颗粒层、无颗粒层和无颗粒层岛叶皮层。在本文中，我们回顾了关于三个细分部分局部和远程回路组织的数据。根据最新的电生理数据，讨论了这些结果的功能意义。提出了将岛叶皮层视为一个功能整合系统，专门用于处理味觉、多模态、认知和情感信息的观点。
