{"id":248569,"date":"2026-07-20T08:05:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T12:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=248569"},"modified":"2026-07-20T08:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T12:12:10","slug":"how-brain-chemistry-changes-what-we-taste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/07\/how-brain-chemistry-changes-what-we-taste\/","title":{"rendered":"How Brain Chemistry Changes What We Taste"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded an R01 research grant<\/a> to the lab of assistant professor of physiology and neurobiology Natale Sciolino, Ph.D., to study how the brain chemical norepinephrine influences taste perception <\/span>\u2014 <\/span>work that could deepen understanding of why taste changes with behavioral state, age, illness, and neurological disease.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our sense of taste changes over the course of our lives. It’s why kids tend to turn up their noses at vegetables, while adults can find appreciation for the bitter notes of leafy greens. Taste can also shift with age, during temporary illnesses such as a cold, or as a result of chronic neurological conditions such as Parkinson\u2019s disease or Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A
Members of the Sciolino Lab. From left: Sanjana Krishnakumar (Ph.D. student), Abigail McFarland (undergraduate student), Natale Sciolino (Assistant Professor), Qichen (Will) Fan (Ph.D. candidate), Anne Gaus (undergraduate student), Daniel Lopes (undergraduate student), Trang (Paula) To (Ph.D. student). (Bri Diaz\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These changes matter because taste plays a central role in eating behavior. Whether someone is nine or 99 years old, they\u2019ll be less likely to consume foods that don\u2019t appeal to them, regardless of how nutritious those foods may be. Changes in taste can also affect appetite, nutrition, quality of life and, in some cases, a person\u2019s overall health.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Researchers in <\/span>Sciolino’s lab<\/span><\/a> have received nearly $565,000 for the first year of their <\/span>NIH R01 grant award<\/span><\/a> to better understand how complex processes in the brain shape taste perception. Their work could eventually help people experiencing taste loss, including those affected by long COVID or neurological disease. As the basic science advances, it could also help clinicians track changes in patients\u2019 palates over time, providing a useful biomarker of health and aging.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sciolino\u2019s lab focuses on norepinephrine, also known as noradrenaline. This neurotransmitter is produced largely in a small region of the brainstem called the locus coeruleus, or LC. The lab studies how norepinephrine influences motivated behaviors, including eating and the fight-or-flight response.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNorepinephrine is a neuromodulator, which means it can change how neural circuits process information,\u201d explains Will Fan, a Ph.D. candidate leading this research. \u201cRather than carrying one simple message from one neuron to another, neuromodulators can tune the activity of many neurons at once. In this project, we\u2019re asking what happens when norepinephrine is released in the parts of the brain that process taste. Does it change neural activity? And if so, does that change how an animal perceives a taste and decides whether to consume it?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt it was super important to investigate this gap,\u201d adds Sciolino. \u201cHow is norepinephrine regulating taste information in the brain, and ultimately, taste-guided behaviors \u2013 that is, do we like or dislike the food, and do we ultimately consume or reject it?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prior research in the field has shown that taste is linked to a mammal\u2019s internal state, or level of behavioral arousal. For example, when an animal or human is in a low-arousal state (like boredom), it may be more likely to perceive taste along a broad dichotomy of \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d rather than identifying individual tastes. Similar effects occur during sickness.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, says Sciolino, \u201cNo one knows how those brain states switch. We think that norepinephrine can be that potential mediator.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A
Trang (Paula) To, a Ph.D. student in the Sciolino Lab, examines histological sections of the mouse brain. (Bri Diaz\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sciolino believes findings from this research are \u201cgoing to be very important for advancing the field of not only taste, but also the broader field of chemosensation,\u201d which includes both taste and smell.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Scientists have previously studied how individual neurons in the LC respond to sensory stimuli. What makes this work different is its focus on how <\/span>systems <\/span><\/i>of neurons behave. With a more holistic view of how the brain is processing taste, the researchers hope to unlock a better understanding of how it computes and responds to different types of sensory input.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To test their hypotheses, the researchers stimulate the release of norepinephrine in the LC in mice as they are exposed to different tastes, using a method called optogenetics. Using miniature microscopes, they closely monitor its effects on the activity of the brain\u2019s gustatory cortex to see how the mice perceive the tastes, a process known as palatability encoding. Mice provide a powerful model for this work because researchers can precisely study the brain circuits involved in taste perception while observing how changes in neural activity affect taste-guided behavior.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Research reported in this story was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the NIH under Award Number R01DC023564. Related research in Sciolino\u2019s lab has also received support from the Brain Research Foundation (BRF) Seed Grant under Award Number BRFSG2023-09. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH or BRF.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NIH R01 grant awarded to assistant professor Natale Sciolino to explore the neuroscience of taste<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":248599,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2460,2390,2076,2235],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2413],"class_list":["post-248569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-faculty","category-physiology-neurobiology","category-research","category-today-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-28 07:43:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248569"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248655,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248569\/revisions\/248655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/248599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248569"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=248569"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=248569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}