Behavioral genetics and taste

BMC Neuroscience

Table 1 Methods to characterize taste in non-human animals

Information	Method
	Long-term two-bottle preference	Brief-access licking responses	CTA	Electrophysiological recording of taste-evoked activity in gustatory nerves
Sensitivity (threshold)	+/- ^a	+/- ^a	+	+
Intensity	+	+	-	+
Hedonic (pleasant or unpleasant) properties	+	+	-	-
Taste quality	-	-	+	+/-^b
Specificity	Can be influenced by post-ingestive effects	Minimizes postingestive effects; can be influenced by water restriction	Can be influenced by non-taste sensory properties (e.g., odor), learning ability or sensitivity to an unconditioned stimulus	Directly assesses peripheral neural response

+, test is primarily designed to assess a particular aspect of taste perception (e.g., intensity or quality); +/-, limited information regarding the aspect of taste perception can be derived from test results; -, test is not informative regarding the aspect of taste perception. ^a Response thresholds of naive (not conditioned) animals are often higher that taste recognition thresholds in conditioned animals. ^b Taste quality can be assessed using analysis of single-fiber activity, but not using integrated whole-nerve recordings. All types of tests have been used in genetic experiments, but two-bottle preference tests have the highest throughput of phenotyping.

ISSN: 1471-2202