It was more of an artistic interpretation of his measurements than an accurate representation of them. MesserWoland via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA The graph plots the relative change in sensitivity for each taste from one point to the next, not against other tastes. When Hänig published his results, he included a line graph of his measurements. It’s how he decided to present that information. Different parts of the tongue do have a lower threshold for perceiving certain tastes, but these differences are rather minute. Though his research never tested for the now-accepted fifth basic taste, umami (the savory taste of glutamate, as in monosodium glutamate or MSG), Hänig’s hypothesis generally holds up. Hänig found that there was some variation around the tongue in how much stimulus it took for a taste to register. It is true that the tip and edges of the tongue are particularly sensitive to tastes, as these areas contain many tiny sensory organs called taste buds. Hänig set out to measure the thresholds for taste perception around the edges of the tongue (what he referred to as the “taste belt”) by dripping stimuli corresponding to salty, sweet, sour and bitter tastes in intervals around the edges of the tongue. That familiar but not-quite-right map has its roots in a 1901 paper, Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes, by German scientist David P Hänig. We’ve known this for a long time.Īnd yet you probably saw the map in school when you learned about taste. The receptors that pick up these tastes are actually distributed all over. The ability to taste sweet, salty, sour and bitter isn’t sectioned off to different parts of the tongue. In fact, it was debunked by chemosensory scientists (the folks who study how organs, like the tongue, respond to chemical stimuli) long ago. It’s possibly the most recognizable symbol in the study of taste, but it’s wrong. Sweet in the front, salty and sour on the sides and bitter at the back. Tongue via Everybody has seen the tongue map – that little diagram of the tongue with different sections neatly cordoned off for different taste receptors.
Taste receptors for salty, sweet, bitter and sour are found all over the tongue.
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