Green Barry G
The John B. Pierce Laboratory, 290 Congress Avenue, New Haven, CT, USA 06519.
Department of Surgery (Otolaryngology), Yale School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT, USA 06511.
Curr Opin Physiol. 2021 Apr;20:154-158. doi: 10.1016/j.cophys.2020.12.010. Epub 2021 Jan 19.
To understand human taste requires not only physiological studies ranging from receptor mechanisms to brain circuitry, but also psychophysical studies that quantitatively describe the perceptual output of the system. As obvious as this requirement is, differences in research approaches, methodologies, and objectives complicate the ability to meet it. Discussed here is an example of how the discovery two decades ago of a perceptual taste illusion () has led to physiological and psychophysical research on both peripheral and central mechanisms of taste, including most recently a psychophysical study of the heat sensitivity of the human sweet taste receptor TAS1R2/T1R3, and an fMRI study of a possible central gain mechanism that may underlie, in part, differences in human taste sensitivity. In addition to the new data and hypotheses these studies have generated, they illustrate instances of research on taste motivated by evidence derived from different approaches and levels of analysis.
要理解人类的味觉，不仅需要从受体机制到脑回路的生理学研究，还需要对系统的感知输出进行定量描述的心理物理学研究。尽管这一要求显而易见，但研究方法、方法论和目标的差异使得满足这一要求变得复杂。这里讨论的一个例子是，二十年前发现的一种味觉感知错觉如何引发了对味觉外周和中枢机制的生理学和心理物理学研究，包括最近一项关于人类甜味受体TAS1R2/T1R3热敏感性的心理物理学研究，以及一项关于可能部分构成人类味觉敏感性差异基础的中枢增益机制的功能磁共振成像研究。除了这些研究所产生的新数据和假设外，它们还说明了由不同分析方法和层面得出的证据所推动的味觉研究实例。
