Fig. 10

Distribution of taste stimuli in a two-dimensional space resulting from multidimensional scaling, MDS, before and after miraculin. The left plot shows results of MDS based data before miraculin application. Hatched symbols depict stimulation with salts, open symbols depict acids, gray symbols depict bitter and black circles depict sweeteners. The distance between the points indicates how similar the taste of a compound is in relation to the taste of other compounds. A large group of sweet fibers (dark circles) separated from the rest of the fibers and represent tastants liked by the marmosets. The right plot is data acquired after miraculin. It shows that the acids (open circles) have moved to a position closer to the sweetness, which suggests that S fibers also responded to the acids. The positions of the salts and the bitter compounds remain distant from sweeteners. [60]