Introduction

This mini-review discusses some of the parallels between rodent neurophysiological and human psychophysical data concerning temperature effects on sweet taste.

Methods and Purpose

“Sweet” is an innately rewarding taste sensation that is associated in part with foods that contain calories in the form of sugars. Humans and other mammals show unconditioned preference for select sweet stimuli. Such preference is poised to influence diet selection and, in turn, nutritional status, which underscores the importance of delineating the physiological mechanisms for sweet taste with respect to their influence on human health. Advances in our knowledge of the biology of sweet taste in humans have arisen in part through studies on mechanisms of gustatory processing in rodent models. Along this line, recent work has revealed there are operational parallels in neural systems for sweet taste between mice and humans, as indexed by similarities in the effects of temperature on central neurophysiological and psychophysical responses to sucrose in these species. Such association strengthens the postulate that rodents can serve as effective models of particular mechanisms of appetitive taste processing. Data supporting this link are discussed here, as are rodent and human data that shed light on relationships between mechanisms for sweet taste and ingestive disorders, such as alcohol abuse.

Results and Conclusions

Rodent models have utility for understanding mechanisms of taste processing that may pertain to human flavor perception. Importantly, there are limitations to generalizing data from rodents, albeit parallels across species do exist.

中文翻译：

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人类和啮齿动物对甜味的知觉和神经反应。

介绍

这份小型评论讨论了啮齿动物神经生理学和人类心理物理数据之间的一些相似之处，这些数据涉及温度对甜味的影响。

方法和目的

“甜味”是一种与生俱来的奖励味觉，部分与含糖形式卡路里的食物有关。人类和其他哺乳动物对选择的甜味刺激表现出无条件的偏爱。这种偏爱势必会影响饮食选择，进而影响营养状况，这凸显了就甜味对人体健康的影响划定甜味生理机制的重要性。通过对啮齿动物模型中味觉加工机制的研究，我们对人类甜味生物学的认识有所提高。沿着这条线，最近的工作表明，神经系统在小鼠和人类之间存在甜味相似的操作相似之处，如温度对这些物种对蔗糖的中枢神经生理和心理生理反应的相似性所表明的那样。这样的联系强化了啮齿动物可以作为特定的食味加工机制的有效模型的假设。本文讨论了支持此链接的数据，啮齿动物和人类数据也阐明了甜味和消化系统疾病（例如酗酒）之间的关系。

结果与结论

啮齿动物模型可用于了解可能与人类风味感知有关的味道加工机制。重要的是，尽管确实存在跨物种的相似性，但从啮齿类动物获得数据的普遍性还是有局限性的。