Interaction of Taste and Place Coding in the Hippocampus

Finding food is essential for animals' survival and taste and context memory are often linked. Although hippocampal responses to space and contexts have been well characterized, little is known about how the hippocampus responds to tastes. Here, we identified a subset of hippocampal neurons that discriminated between tastes based on palatability. Cells with stronger taste responses typically had weaker spatial responses and taste responses were confined to place cells' firing fields. Hippocampal taste responses emerged later than in other parts of the taste system, suggesting that the hippocampus does not influence taste decisions, but rather associates the hedonic value of tastes consumed within a particular context. This could be one way that animals use past experience to locate food sources.