AChemS Career Networking Seminar Series

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Natale R. Sciolino and Donald Katz

March 11, 2026 | 11:00 AM ET

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Natale R. Sciolino
Department of Physiology and Neurobiology, University of Connecticut

Locus Coeruleus Activation Transforms Cortical Taste Representations Along Distinct Stimulus Dimensions

Norepinephrine neurons in the locus coeruleus (LC) shape neuronal sensory responses, but how these effects influence cortical representation remains unclear. We examined LC modulation of primary gustatory cortex (GC) using miniscope calcium imaging in mice during intraoral taste delivery. Optogenetic LC activation preceded half of the trials across three stimulus sets varying in palatability, mixture composition, or intensity. LC activation enhanced the correlation between neuronal response and palatability and increased separation between palatable and unpalatable tastants in GC coding space. The mixture‑ and concentration-coding axes were similarly extended but also underwent rotation, suggesting invariance in palatability encoding under LC modulation. These effects arose from gain modulation and more flexible reshaping of GC tuning, highlighting complex neuromodulatory influences on sensory coding.

Donald Katz
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Brandeis University

The processing of tastes, from delivery to response.

The job of taste circuitry is to quickly transform input related to a substance on the tongue into a decision as to whether that substance should be consumed or ejected from the mouth. This process can be observed through analysis and perturbation of the time course of firing in cortical neurons, which reflects coupling between neural ensembles distributed across multiple brain regions--notably including gustatory cortex and basolateral amygdala--functioning as a dynamical system.