Dr. Charles Zuker

Like the keys of a piano.

Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami.

You play the key and you activate that one chord.

And that one chord in the case of a piano leads to a note, you know, a tune.

And in the case of taste leads to an action and a behavior.

We have taste buds distributed in various parts of the tongue.

So there is a map on the distribution of taste buds, but each taste bud has around a hundred taste receptor cells.

And those taste receptor cells can be of five types, sweet, sour, bitter, salty, or umami.

And for the most part,

All taste buds have the representation of all five taste qualities.

Now, there's no question that there is a slight bias for some tastes.

Like bitter is particularly enriched at the very back of your tongue.

And there is a teleological basis for that, actually a biological basis for that.

That's the last line of defense before you swallow something bad.

And so let's make sure that the very back of your tongue has plenty of these bad news receptors so that if they get activated, you can trigger a gagging reflex and get rid of this that otherwise may kill you.

The important thing is that, you know, after the receptors for these five, the detectors, the molecules that sends sweet, sour, bitter salt to mommy,

These are receptors, proteins found on the surface of taste receptor cells that interact with these chemicals.

And once they interact, then they trigger the cascade of events, biochemical events inside the cell that now sends an electrical signal that says there is sweet here or there is salt here.

Let's compare and contrast sweet and bitter.

as we follow their lines from the tongue to the brain.