Neuroscience
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Taste and oral somatosensation are intimately related to each other from peripheral receptors to the central nervous system. Oral astringent sensation is thought to contain both gustatory and somatosensory components. ⋯ Three distributed brain sub-regions responded significantly different to the three types of oral stimulations: lobule IX of the cerebellar hemisphere, right dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus, and left middle temporal gyrus. This suggests that these regions play a major role in the discrimination of astringency, taste, and pungency.