Library · Anatomy
Taste bud
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Taste buds are the structures you taste with, and they are not scattered at random across the tongue: they live inside certain kinds of papillae, the bumps you can see on its surface. They are found in the fungiform papillae, the foliate papillae, and the circumvallate papillae. The filiform papillae have none, because they are purely tactile.
Each bud is a neuroepithelial structure, meaning half epithelium and half nerve tissue, and it works as a chemoreceptor: a detector of chemical substances. Inside are cells with different jobs. Type II cells detect umami, the savory taste, along with sweet and bitter, and they do it through G protein coupled receptors, membrane machinery that turns contact into a signal. Type III cells are the ones that mediate the response to sour and salty.
And the diagram taught in school has to go. The old tongue map, which gave each taste its own zone, does not hold up: receptor cells for every taste modality are distributed across the tongue and the lining of the mouth. Tastes do not occupy separate zones, like countries on a map.
In brief
Taste buds sit in the fungiform, foliate, and circumvallate papillae, and are absent from the filiform papillae, which are purely tactile.
They are neuroepithelial chemoreceptor structures: type II cells detect umami, sweet, and bitter through G protein coupled receptors, while type III cells mediate sour and salty.
Although the old tongue map assigned each taste its own zone, receptor cells for every taste modality are spread across the tongue and the oral mucosa.
Tastes do not occupy separate zones, like countries on a map.
Sources (1)
- National Center for Biotechnology Information, StatPearls PublishingAnatomy, Head and Neck, Tongue Taste Buds, StatPearlsPublished
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Updated