taste

Low salt intake during pregnancy in mice influences the pruning of extra synapses of the taste circuit later in life.

With an appetite for answers, scientists get to the meat of why some unusual foods taste like our favorite fowl.

Signals from sweeteners and sugars are relayed from the gut to the brain by different neural pathways, a new study concludes.

A study suggests that mutations in the gene that encodes the T1R1/T1R3 taste receptor allowed primates that relied on insects for protein to transition to eating leaves and fruit.

Neurological representations of different tastes—like those of different smells but unlike those of sight, hearing, and touch—do not cluster in distinct spots within a murine brain region, a study shows.

Data from a crowdsourcing smartphone app is helping to track the spread of the disease in real time and reveals the symptom as the number one indicator of infection.

Otopetrin-1 was previously only known for its role in the inner ear, but it turns out it also forms a pH-detecting pore in the tongue’s sour taste receptors.

A whole-genome analysis of people who experience color when they listen to sounds points to a handful of genes involved in neural development.

One person’s quest to get to the bottom of the unique way he experiences food

Meet some of the people featured in the May 2017 issue of The Scientist.

Author Bob Holmes dove into the taste-determining realm of his genome.

Odor, taste, and light receptors are present in many different parts of the body, and they have surprisingly diverse functions.

From the gut and airways to the blood, muscle, and skin, diverse sensory receptors are doing unconventional things.

Odors experienced via the mouth are essential to our sense of taste.

Scientists pinpoint how penguins may have lost their ability to sense sweet, umami, and bitter flavors.

Transcription factor levels dictate which neurons in a network store a memory.

Hummingbirds perceive sweetness through a receptor with which other vertebrates taste savory foods. 

With a diet of blood, the flying mammals have largely lost the ability to taste bitter flavors.

Scientists discover why certain cockroaches avoid eating insecticide-containing sugary bait.