Sensory and palatability coding of taste stimuli in cortex involves dynamic and asymmetric cortico-amygdalar interactions

Conventionally, taste circuitry is considered feedforward, traveling up from the brainstem, with each additional node containing more sophisticated information. We challenge this convention by demonstrating that amygdala and cortex instead influence each other bidirectionally, yet in a direction-specific and asymmetric manner. These influences appear to drive different parts of the taste response, with distinct patterns for decision-making and behavioral output; furthermore, involvement in cortex-amygdala functional connectivity determines the strength of encoding in cortical single neurons.