Barretto et al. have published a paper, now available online, that highlights “the highly specific transfer of taste information between taste cells and the central nervous system.”
Specifically, the authors uncovered the “fine selectivity in the taste preference of ganglion neurons” and established a link between taste receptor cells in the tongue and the “principal neural afferents relaying taste information to the brain.”
RPJ Barretto, S Gillis-Smith, J Chandrashekar, DA Yarmolinsky, MJ Schnitzer, NJP Ryba and CS Zuker, The neural representation of taste quality at the periphery. Nature (2014)