effect of clonidine on chorda tympani neural response to salt and sweet tastes in the rat

ABSTRACT

Two commonly used tastants, sucrose and sodium chloride, were applied to the tongue surface of rats while recording was made from their gustatory peripheral nerve, chorda tympani [CT]. This multiple unit recording was performed in the presence of different doses of clonidine, an antihypertensive drug. Clonidine, in low doses [0.15, 0.25 mg/kg, intraperitoneally] caused a significant decrease in the relative integrated neural responses of the rats' CT to NaCl [0.1 M] and sucrose [0.5 M] as compared to the reference solution [NH4Cl] [p<0.05]. In these doses clonidine did not act selectively in response to these special tastants, but in higher doses [0.5 mg/kg], it attenuated the nerve response to sucrose, while no effect was elicited on the response to NaCl