Mice perceive synergistic umami mixtures as tasting sweet

Abstract

Previous electrophysiological investigation shows that combinations of compounds classified by humans as umami-tasting, such as glutamate salts and 5'-ribonucleotides, elicit synergistic responses in neurons throughout the rodent taste system and produce a pattern that resembles responses to sweet compounds. The current study tested the hypothesis that a synergistic mixture of monopotassium glutamate (MPG) and inositol monophosphate (IMP) possesses perceptual similarity to sucrose in mice. We estimated behavioral similarity among these tastants and the individual umami compounds using a series of conditioned taste aversion (CTA) tests, a procedure that measures whether a CTA formed to one stimulus generalizes to another. Our primary finding was that a CTA to a synergistic mixture of MPG + IMP generalizes to sucrose, and vice-versa. This indicates umami synergistic mixtures are perceived as having a sweet, or at least sucrose-like, taste to mice. Considering other recent studies, our data argue strongly in favor of multiple receptor mechanisms for umami detection, and complexity in taste perception models for rodents.

Keywords: brief-access test; distributive model; labeled line theory; monosodium glutamate; perceptual discrimination; taste cell receptors.