Research - Tongue.
- Olivia Katrina Lucie Goodenough
- Mar 25, 2017
- 2 min read
Tongue.
Has Between 2,000 and 4,000 Taste Buds.
Sensory Cells in taste buds responsible for how we perceive taste renew themselves every week
About one-quarter of the population is considered "supertasters," people with a heightened sense of taste
Another quarter is considered "nontasters," who fortunately can taste foods, but are less sensitive and cannot detect the bitter taste
Taste buds not visible to the human eye. Those little pink and white bumps you do see on your tongue are actually called papillae, hair-like projections that taste buds rest atop. Each has an average of six taste buds buried inside its surface tissue.
What you are seeing that appear to be the taste buds are taste papillae, which are small buds that contain sensory nerve cells responsible for the sense of taste.
It's true most taste buds are on your tongue, but there are also taste cells in the back of your throat, on your epiglottis (that flap of cartilage in the mouth at the back of the tongue), your nose and sinuses, all the way down the throat to the upper part of the esophagus
All these cells send signals to the brain that are converted into what we perceive as taste.
We grew up believing the tongue had four taste zones: one each for sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, but this is not the case. These tastes, along with a fifth taste called umami (savory), can be sensed on all parts of the tongue. The sides of the tongue are more sensitive overall than the middle, and the back of our tongue is more sensitive to bitter tastes.
Taste buds have helped us evolve as humans. In the beginning, the sense of taste helped us test the foods we ate: bitter and sour tastes might indicate poisonous plants or rotting foods. The back of our tongue is sensitive to bitter tastes so we can spit out poisonous or spoiled foods before we swallow them. Sweet and salty tastes let us know foods were rich in nutrients.
