Dr. Charles Zuker

And then it goes through a number of stations

where that sweet signal goes from sweet neuron to sweet neuron to sweet neuron to eventually get to your cortex.

And once it gets to your taste cortex, that's where meaning is imposed into that signal.

It's then, this is what the data suggests, that now you can identify this as a sweet stimuli.

And how quickly does that all happen?

You know, the timescale of the nervous system, it's fast, yeah?

And so- Within less than a second.

Yeah.

And in fact, we can demonstrate this because we can stick electrodes at each of these stations.

You deliver the stimuli, and within a fraction of a second, you see now the response in these following stations.

Now it gets to the cortex, yeah?

And now in there, you impose meaning to that taste.

There is an area of your brain that represents the taste of sweet in taste cortex and a different area that represents the taste of bitter.

In essence, there is a topographic map

of these taste qualities inside your brain?

So taste, we just told you that's, you know, predetermined hardwire.

But predetermined hardwire, it doesn't mean that it's not modulated by learning or experience.

It only means that you are born

liking sweet and disliking bitter.

And we have many examples of plasticity.