Abstract
Taste buds are the sensory end organs of the gustatory system. Thousands of these tiny sensory structures are embedded throughout the lingual epithelium and palate. As welldefined anatomical structures, taste buds can provide valuable insight into microcircuit organization. Information transmitted by taste buds to the brain results in conscious perceptions of taste—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, and perhaps fat and others, but they also generate signals that initiate physiological reflexes such as a rapid burst of insulin secretion from the pancreatic islets to prepare the digestive tract for food. These responses are termed
cephalic phase reflexes.
This chapter presents an overview of how cellcell communication and synaptic transmission within taste buds might underlie information processing in these sensory end organs, and perhaps also sheds light on the problem of taste coding, at least at its initial stages in the periphery.