Image adapted from: Vincenzo Giove; CC0. The surface of our tongue is covered with tiny bumps called papillae, which contain our tastebuds and also some glands that help in the creation and secretion of saliva. There are four different types of papillae, which come in different shapes and sizes and can be found in different regions of our tongue in varying numbers.
What most of them have in common though, is the tastebuds they contain. Tastebuds are a combination of cells—basal cells, columnar structural cells, and between 10 and 50 taste receptor cells, which are renewed every days. Some of these receptor cells contain proteins on their surfaces that bind to some of the chemicals from our food, while others have ion channels that are activated by different chemicals.
Once the receptor has detected a particular chemical, this information is conveyed along a series of neural pathways to the brain, where taste is perceived. The number of tastebuds people have can vary greatly. I can remember a biology class where we made sugar and salt solutions and pipetted them onto different parts of our tongues to confirm the map was right.
The famous tongue diagram has appeared in hundreds of textbooks over the decades. Yet when he transferred this information to a graph, the impression was given that different areas corresponded to different tastes. People used to think sweetness could only be tasted on the tip of the tongue Credit: Alamy. Boring conducted a number of studies which were far from dull. One of my favourite references is Boring and Boring where Edwin Boring and his wife woke people up at random intervals during the night to see if they could guess what time it was.
Edwin Boring also wrote a book about perception and the senses which included a plan of the tongue indicating different regions for different tastes, a diagram just like the maps you sometimes still see in books today. Today we know that different regions of the tongue can detect sweet, sour, bitter and salty.
Taste buds are found elsewhere too — in the roof of the mouth and even in the throat. As well as detecting the four main tastes, each taste bud can also detect the most recently discovered taste, umami — the taste that makes savoury foods like parmesan so more-ish.
These tastes are not all detected in the same way. For a long time it was assumed that the receptor cells inside our taste buds could spot any taste, but this idea was overturned by Charles Zuker who runs a lab at the University of California, San Diego. Well, you can thank your taste buds for letting you appreciate the saltiness of pretzels and the sweetness of ice cream.
Taste buds are sensory organs that are found on your tongue and allow you to experience tastes that are sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. How exactly do your taste buds work? Well, stick out your tongue and look in the mirror. See all those bumps?
Those are called papillae say: puh-PILL-ee , and most of them contain taste buds. Taste buds have very sensitive microscopic hairs called microvilli say: mye-kro-VILL-eye. Those tiny hairs send messages to the brain about how something tastes, so you know if it's sweet, sour, bitter, or salty. The average person has about 10, taste buds and they're replaced every 2 weeks or so.
0コメント