BCS 151 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Taste Bud, Mastication, Caffeine
4 Dec 2016
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More primitive sensory systems but still important in food intake. Taste enables an organism to avoid toxins and consume nutrients taste in ingestion"s. Mastication allows to break down food to release substances present in the food: pulverize and macerate cellular material by repeated crushing and tearing actions executed at a rate of about 100 chews/min, aids in digestion. To be tasted, at least some of the molecules in a substance must dissolve in saliva (i. e. to be soluble) 5 taste sensations: sweet sugars, some amino acids, salty metal ions (inorganic salts, sour hydrogen ions (acids, bitter alkaloids (caffeine, quinine, nicotine, umami amino acid glutamate (msg) Most sensitive = bitter, sour: bitter things tend to be poisonous. Different regions of the tongue are more sensitive to 1 sensations but overall, sensitive to all. Blind spot: in the middle of the tongue has no taste buds. There are many taste cells to one taste bud.
