What happens in our brain that makes us experience the sweet taste of a donut or the bitter taste of tonic water? What are the patterns of neural activity responsible for the perception of taste?

A new study from Stony Brook University found that the map of neural responses mediating taste perception does not involve, as previously believed, specialized groups of neurons in the brain, but rather overlapping and spatially distributed populations. The findings, to be published in Current Biology, counter an influential but controversial theory based on studies suggesting that there is a topographic map in the gustatory cortex that is responsible for our perception of taste. According to this theory, the gustatory cortex has "hot spots" of neurons whose activation leads to the perception of certain tastes. The new study by Stony Brook researchers demonstrates such a simple map of taste does not exist in the cortex of behaving animals.

Research on a genetic heart disease has uncovered a new and unexpected mechanism for heart failure. This landmark discovery found a correlation between the clumping of RNA-binding proteins ― long linked to neurodegenerative disease ― and the aggregates of protein found in the heart tissue of patients with RBM20 dilated cardiomyopathy.

Dilated cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body. A decade ago, Timothy Olson, M.D., a pediatric cardiologist at Mayo Clinic, traced the disease to a genetic mutation in a gene called RBM20. Unlike most heart disease, this form of cardiomyopathy can affect patients as early as young adulthood, and they are at particularly high risk for sudden cardiac death.