Anannya Roy, Amity University Kolkata
Taste is one of our most important senses. Without it, we would never know the pleasure of eating ice cream on a hot summer afternoon and drinking our favorite tea while reading a Jane Austin classic.
Memory retrieval is the basic ability of organisms to make use of acquired and inconsistent information about the world. This interesting phenomenon has been studied by Scientists for a long time, yet the actual mechanism on the neurobiological level is still unknown.
By studying taste we can study memory. In the wild, organisms approach new tastes cautiously and then based upon their likes and dislike develop a positive or negative memory. This memory plays an important role in the organism’s future decisions and preferences, often protecting them in different situations. Animals can be trained to display aversion towards innately appetitive tastants by Conditioned taste aversion (CTA). A group of scientists studying this phenomenon has experimented on animals in the lab. Organisms in the lab can be manipulated to express aversion towards certain tasty foods, thus the previous memory formed because of their encounter is removed. Researchers have done this by single pairing with Malaise-inducing agents such as lithium chloride. This aversive memory that is created will make the organisms avoid the same food in the future.
Among mammals, there is the presence of an anterior insula that helps to retrieve information about tastants. This research is telling us that the Conditioned taste aversion memory retrieves any previous cell-type specification. CTA memory acquisition needs activation of excitatory neurons and the inhibition of inhibitory neurons. Neural activity that arises as a result of alC is contributing differentially to memory acquisition and retrieval. The activation of excitatory alC neurons contributes to both the CTA memory acquisition as well as assessing the chemo genetic viral approach. Viral constraints were injected into the alC of wild-type mice, thus incorporating the inhibitory designer receptors. These get activated by designer drugs (DREADDS).
Though there have been advances in pharmacological studies, the actual role of GABAergenic on aversive taste memory acquisition is still largely unknown. The output of alC on lower brain regions shapes the valence of learned aversive taste memories. Researchers had focused on layer V of the agranular insula which is the special region where limbic and gustatory information converges. The majority of alC-BLA neurons are also localized here. This research sheds light on the mechanism behind memory retrieval. It provides insights into how memory is linked to taste and how it can be manipulated. It opens gates to lots of research opportunities and might help us understand complicated memory-related disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Today scientists are constantly working day and night to develop this field and as budding researchers, it is our sole duty to explore these concepts more.
Also read: Are rivers responsible for plastic emissions in the Ocean?
Reference: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00523-6
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