Temperature sensation is a component of flavor perception. In mammals, the high resting temperature of the tongue surface promotes intraoral cooling sensations during mouth openings for heat exchange, communication, and feeding behavior, as notable to humans during consumption of chilled foods and beverages. While cool temperatures applied to the oral mucosa can excite taste fibers, oral cooling more strongly engages primary afferent and central neurons of the trigeminal system, which supplies somatosensation and nociception to craniofacial tissues. Several prior studies have characterized peripheral trigeminal ganglion neurons and the mechanisms that imbue them with sensitivity to cool temperatures, and there is a building understanding of how downstream central trigeminal neurons and pathways in the brain represent neural information about intraoral cooling. This talk will discuss efforts to elucidate the functional organization of central trigeminal neurons and circuits that convey signals for oral cooling in the brain. Using neurophysiology and statistical clustering methods in mouse models, we have identified different subpopulations of medullary trigeminal neurons that project to the thalamus and respond to innocuous moderate or extreme oral cooling and cold stimulation of oral epithelia. Recordings from genetically targeted mice have found these subpopulations of orosensory cooling neurons to variably depend on oral thermal input from the cold and menthol receptor transient receptor potential melastatin 8 (TRPM8) and suggest they may serve different functions. These data pertain to understanding trigeminal components of flavor coding and how somatosensory features of flavor stimuli may interact with and influence other orosensory modalities, such as taste, to shape ingestive preferences. Funded by NIH grant DC011579 to C.H.L.