A gustocentric perspective to understanding primary sensory cortices

•General principles of sensory coding have been derived from neocortical areas.•Studying the gustatory cortex (GC) provides a new perspective on sensory processing.•GC ensemble activity can be described in terms of metastable dynamics.•GC activity is intimately linked to reward processing.•GC integrates cross-modal information for the sake of perception and prediction.

Most of the general principles used to explain sensory cortical function have been inferred from experiments performed on neocortical, primary sensory areas. Attempts to apply a neocortical view to the study of the gustatory cortex (GC) have provided only a limited understanding of this area. Failures to conform GC to classical neocortical principles have been implicitly interpreted as a demonstration of GC's uniqueness. Here we propose to take the opposite perspective, dismissing GC's uniqueness and using principles extracted from its study as a lens for looking at neocortical sensory function. In this review, we describe three significant findings related to gustatory cortical function and advocate their relevance for understanding neocortical sensory areas.