• Taste, temperature and pain sensations a

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Mon Mar 21 22:30:46 2022
    Taste, temperature and pain sensations are neurologically linked

    Date:
    March 21, 2022
    Source:
    University of Oklahoma
    Summary:
    Biologists have found that the brain categorizes taste, temperature
    and pain-related sensations in a common region of the brain and
    that the brain also groups these sensations together as either
    pleasant or aversive, potentially offering new insights into how
    scientists might better understand the body's response to and
    treatment of pain.



    FULL STORY ==========================================================================
    If you have eaten a chili pepper, you have likely felt how your body
    reacts to the spicy hot sensation. New research published by biologists
    at the University of Oklahoma shows that the brain categorizes taste, temperature and pain- related sensations in a common region of the
    brain. The researchers suggest the brain also groups these sensations
    together as either pleasant or aversive, potentially offering new insights
    into how scientists might better understand the body's response to and treatment of pain.


    ==========================================================================
    "The spicy hot sensation you get from a chili pepper is actually a
    pain sensation...this follows activation of pain-related fibers that
    innervate the tongue and are heat sensitive," said Christian H. Lemon,
    Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Biology in the Dodge
    Family College of Arts and Sciences at OU. "What happens is a chemical
    in chili peppers, called capsaicin, causes activation of pain fibers
    and 'tricks' the neurons to react like there is a heat stimulus in your
    mouth, so you'll notice when you eat spicy foods, your body will react
    to try to remove the heat - your blood vessels can dilate and you can
    start to sweat because your body 'thinks' it's overheating." Lemon,
    who is also a member of the OU Institute for Biomedical Engineering,
    Science and Technology, and researchers in his lab, Jinrong Li, Ph.D.,
    and?Md Sams Sazzad Ali, Ph.D., published an article in The Journal
    of Neuroscience that examines how taste, temperature and pain-related sensations interact in the brain. Their article was also selected for
    the journal's Featured Research section.

    "Neural messages associated with pain are partly carried by neural
    circuits involved with sensing temperature," Lemon said. "This would
    explain, for example, why when you touch a hot stove, it's a burning
    pain. There are intimate ties between temperature and pain, and there
    are intimate ties between temperature and taste...just about everything
    we eat is either warmed or cooled, and that's known to have a fairly
    robust effect on the way we perceive certain tastes." The research
    team wanted to better understand how temperature and pain intersect
    with taste neurologically. Building on their previous research that had
    shown that temperature and taste signals come together in a particular
    section of the midbrain, Lemon's research group used mouse models under anesthesia to artificially stimulate temperature and pain-related fibers, combined with a physiological method to monitor the actions occurring
    in the brain to determine the connection between these senses.

    "It's been known that temperature and taste can activate some of the
    same cells in the brain, but this was rarely systematically studied,"
    he said. "We wanted to know if the temperature responses that we were
    seeing in this part of the brain were actually attributable to activation
    of thermal and pain-related fibers that innervate the head, face and
    mouth. To do this we used a modern genetic technology where we could
    insert a protein into these 'temperature/ pain' cells that allowed us to control these cells with blue light -- we could turn the cells on with
    a light, like a light switch." "What we found is that these neurons
    that scientists have studied for a long time as taste neurons actually
    respond to artificial stimulation of these temperature/pain cells," he
    added. "This is significant because most scientists that have looked at
    taste, they're usually only studying neural circuits from the perspective
    of taste. Pain scientists are usually only looking at pain- related
    responses, but they actually come together in this part of the midbrain,
    and not only do they come together, they do so in a very systematic way
    where preferred tastes and preferred temperatures are separated from
    adverse taste and temperatures in terms of the way that the responses
    are happening in this part of the brain." The researchers categorize
    preferred or pleasurable tastes as something sweet, like sugar, whereas
    adverse tastes are bitter -- which can signify that something may be toxic
    or harmful. Similarly, people, and mice, have preferred temperatures,
    like a comfortably warmed or cooled environment as compared to an extreme
    cold or extreme heat stimulus.

    Through this artificial stimulation of temperature/pain cells
    and the corresponding taste neurons, they discovered the brain
    segregated preferable tastes and temperatures from adverse tastes and temperatures. This finding offers new insights into how these senses
    interact, which could have implications for how scientists understand
    the brain's responses to stimuli that cause pain.

    "What our results show is that in a midbrain circuit there's a very
    orderly representation of taste and temperature hedonics -- whether
    or not something is pleasurable or aversive -- dependent on input from
    these temperature/pain cells," Lemon said. "These findings suggest that
    the brain is actually using common cells to represent information from different senses where there are relationships between the senses. Since
    pain has ties to temperature sensing, these results might provide clues
    as to how temperature or pain signals might interact with other senses,
    which could be important for developing novel therapeutic strategies
    for pain management."

    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Oklahoma. Note:
    Content may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Jinrong Li, Md Sams Sazzad Ali, Christian H. Lemon. TRPV1-Lineage
    Somatosensory Fibers Communicate with Taste Neurons in the Mouse
    Parabrachial Nucleus. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2022; 42 (9):
    1719 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0927-21.2021 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220321115901.htm

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