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Ph.D. (Psychology/Neuroscience; University of Delaware)
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I am interested in how the sense of taste guides animals in their food choices. I have used several techniques to show that when rats are deprived of a mineral, such as sodium or calcium, the resulting appetite for that mineral is guided in part by gustatory cues. Recently, I have examined the extent to which differences between individuals in sweetener preferences are related to differences in taste-evoked neural responses. I have measured gustatory responses in the periphery and brain in inbred mouse strains that vary in the extent to which they like sweeteners. This work has revealed that neural responses exert an influence on sweetener preferences through a combination of overall response level, patterns of firing across populations of neurons, and temporal patterns of responding. Currently, I am using mouse strains that will provide insight into the role played by individual genes in determining neural responses to sweeteners. |
Stuart McCaughey