Psychology2016

112 CHAPTER 3

noticed that when your nose is all stopped up, your sense of taste is affected, too? That’s

because the sense of taste is really a combination of taste and smell. Without the input from

the nose, there are actually only four, or possibly five, kinds of taste sensors in the mouth.

Gustation: How We Taste the World

3.10 Explain how the sense of taste works.

Our food preferences, or aversions, start to form very early in life, very early! Taste is

one of our earliest developed senses. Research suggests developing babies are exposed

to substances the mother inhales or digests, and these impart flavor to the amniotic

fluid, which the baby also ingests. Along with exposure to different flavors early in life

after we are born, these experiences may affect food choices and nutritional status, that

is, picking certain foods over others, for a long time to come (Beauchamp & Mennella,

2011; Mennella & Trabulsi, 2012).

TA ST E B U D S Ta s t e b u d s are the common name for the taste receptor cells, special kinds

of neurons found in the mouth that are responsible for the sense of taste, or gustation.

Most taste buds are located on the tongue, but there are a few on the roof of the mouth,

the cheeks, under the tongue, and in the throat as well. How sensitive people are to var-

ious tastes depends on how many taste buds they have; some people have only around

500, whereas others have 20 times that number. The latter are called “supertasters” and

need far less seasoning in their food than those with fewer taste buds (Bartoshuk, 1993).

So taste buds are those little bumps I can see when I look closely

at my tongue?

No, those “bumps” are called papillae, and the taste buds line the walls of these

papillae. (See Figure 3.13.)

Each taste bud has about 20 receptors that are very similar to the receptor sites on

receiving neurons at the synapse. to Learning Objective 2.3. In fact, the receptors

on taste buds work exactly like receptor sites on neurons—they receive molecules of vari-

ous substances that fit into the receptor like a key into a lock. Taste is often called a chem-

ical sense because it works with the molecules of foods people eat in the same way the

neural receptors work with neurotransmitters. When the molecules (dissolved in saliva)

fit into the receptors, a signal is fired to the brain, which then interprets the taste sensation.

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Watch the Video Smell and Taste

gustation
the sensation of a taste.