Michelle Bales

Food choice has a major influence on health and one of the most primary and salient cues guiding nutrient consumption is taste. Accordingly, discerning how the brain processes taste information is imperative to help address the spectrum of feeding- and nutrition-related disorders. I use psychophysical methods and neuronal tracing techniques to reveal the behavioral and neuroanatomical contributions of the gustatory cortex, a critical higher-order brain region in the gustatory system.