Taste and oral somatosensation are main components of flavor sensation during food consumption and contribute to protective behaviors. Brain pathways for taste and somatosensation are often studied independently. Yet it is intriguing to know whether they intersect in the brain, potentially reflecting their common role in detecting and avoiding potentially harmful substances. In this talk, I will present the results of a series of studies exploring the integrative neural processing of oral somatosensation and taste in the parabrachial nucleus (PbN). We first recorded neural spikes extracellularly of gustatory neurons in the PbN while orally applying thermal and chemesthetic stimuli in anesthetized mice of both sexes. The circuit connection profile from an oral somatosensory region of the trigeminal nucleus caudalis (Vc) to PbN taste neurons were also tested by applying stimulation to the Vc. We found most taste neurons spiked to Vc pulse stimulation. A subpopulation responsive selectively to the bitter taste stimuli cofired to capsaicin, mustard oil, and noxious heat. Combined with optogenetic techniques, we found the nociceptive activity in PbN bitter taste neurons was suppressed during inhibition of the Vc, implying convergent trigeminal input contributed to such activity. Given that trigeminal TRPV1-lineage fibers transmit somatosensory noxious thermal and pain information, we hypothesized that these fibers participated in the integration of taste and somatosensation in the PbN. In this experiment, we employed TRPV1-ChR2 mice and found optical excitation of TRPV1-lineage fibers more likely elicited responses in bitter taste neurons in lateral PB nuclei that responded to noxious heat and chemesthetic stimuli. Overall, these results show multisensory convergence between gustatory and somatosensory representations in the brain, indicating existing predictable overlap of different sensations related to hedonic coding. Funded by NIH DC011579 to CHL.