Relationship between taste thresholds and antidepressant response: Preliminary findings

IntroductionIn healthy volunteers, light acting through serotonin pathways, decreases the threshold for sweet, but not salt taste; similar to SSRI paroxetine. In depressive disorders, there is deficiency of serotonin throughput, which is remedied by SSRI medications, and results in improvement in symptoms of depression. Thus, we report on taste thresholds before and after SSRI treatment.ObjectivesTo study the variation in thresholds for sweet with SSRI treatment in depressed patients in short- and long-term.AimsTo compare the threshold for sweet (test) and salt (control) after 1 and 4 weeks of SSRI escitalopram therapy in depressed patients.MethodsThe project was approved by the institutional ethics committee. Following informed consent, depressed patients were initiated on escitalopram 10 mg/d (increased to 15 or 20 mg, if required after 1 week,). Taste recognition threshold, intensity and pleasantness were measured for sweet and salt. Each tastant was made −1 to −3 (100 mM–1 mM). Regional recognition thresholds were determined at the tip of the tongue using a cotton bud well soaked in the tastant.ResultsThree males and 4 females of mean ages 39.1 years completed the study. There was significant shift to the left for sweet thresholds between days 0 and 7, and 7 and 28 [F(Dfn, Dfd) = 9.242 (4.162) P &lt; 0.0001]. A similar shift to the left was seen for salt but day 7 only [F(Dfn, Dfd) = 6.213 (4.162)].ConclusionThe increase in serotonin throughput as envisaged through SSRI treatment was paralleled by decrease in sweet thresholds.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.</jats:sec

Experimental results on neutrino oscillations

The phenomenon of neutrino oscillation has been firmly established: neutrinos change their flavor in their path from their source to observers. This paper is dedicated to the description of experimental results in the oscillation field, of their present understanding and of possible future developments in experimental neutrino oscillation physics.Comment: Long review (98 pages, 50 figures

Solving Stellar Astronomy Problems in the Orbital Stellar Stereoscopic Observatory Project

We propose to establish an Orbital Stellar Stereoscopic Observatory (OStSO) consisting of two identically equipped spacecrafts (SCs) in the vicinity of two Lagrangian libration points, L4 and L5, of the “Sun – Earth+Moon barycenter” system. The stereoscopic baseline length is B=a3≈259.111$B = a\sqrt 3 \approx 259.111$ million km (86.4% of the Earth orbit diameter). Each of the two Tsukanova–Korsch three-mirror astrographs has an aperture of 1m and focal length of 30 m; the focal-plane CCD array is 350 mm in diameter. The expected astrometric accuracy is ±0.0007″ in a single measurement. Each frame in the scientific program is captured synchronously by the two astrographs, allowing to obtain instantaneous parallaxes of stars as far as up to 5 kpc, along with spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of point and extended sources in the Tholen filter system (Zellner et al. 1985) extended to 12–14 bands, including the integral one. We expect the project to provide a large amount of important information for stellar astronomy and for various studies of Galactic objects