That famous tongue map diagram marking off different areas of tastes on the tongue viz. Sweet in the front , bitter at the back and salty and sour on the sides, originated in a 1901 paper Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes by German scientist David P Hänig. Hänig dripped stimuli corresponding to salty, sweet, sour and bitter tastes round the edges of the tongue and found that there was a variation in the amount of stimulus that made the tongue register its taste. He plotted a graph for this. This graph led a Harvard professor Edwin G. Boring to finally come out with a tongue map that had various sections devoted to different tastes. This is the map that is taught in schools since ages.

Arguments against the taste map

Ever since the tongue map came into existence there have been arguments opposing it. Results from a number of experiments indicated that all the areas of mouth containing taste buds (even the soft palate on the roof of one’s mouth) are sensitive to all kinds of tastes. The chorda tympani branch of the facial nerve in the front and the glossopharyngeal nerve in the back are the two nerves that are supposed to be responsible for taste perception in tongue area. But studies found that even an absence of chorda tympani didn’t affect the tongue’s ability to taste sweet!

The modern molecular biologists have also identified many receptor proteins that are critical for detecting taste molecules and found that each receptor type is found all taste areas in the mouth and not in certain demarcated sections. If you still want to test it, do it at your home by tasting coffee or a salty wafer. U will know that the taste is spread all over your mouth.

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Author:Technology Blog