Taste

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Taste (or, more formally, gustation) is a form of direct chemoreception and is one of the traditional five senses. It refers to the ability to detect the flavor of substances such as food, certain minerals, and poisons. In humans and many other vertebrate animals the sense of taste partners with the less direct sense of smell, in the brain's perception of flavor. In the West, experts traditionally identified four taste sensations: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Eastern experts traditionally identified a fifth, called umami (savory). More recently, psychophysicists and neuroscientists have suggested other taste categories (umami and fatty acid taste most prominently, as well as the sensation of metallic and water tastes, although the latter is commonly disregarded due to the phenomenon of taste adaptation.[citation needed]) Taste is a sensory function of the central nervous system. The receptor cells for taste in humans are found on the surface of the tongue, along the soft palate, and in the epithelium of the pharynx and epiglottis.

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News tagged with taste


Enhanced sweet taste: This is your tongue on pot

Medicine & Health / Research

created Dec 22, 2009 | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 0

New findings from the Monell Center and Kyushu University in Japan report that endocannabinoids act directly on taste receptors on the tongue to enhance sweet taste.


Got smell? Research shows that accurate taste perception relies on a functioning olfactory system

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Dec 22, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

As anyone suffering through a head cold knows, food tastes wrong when the nose is clogged, an experience that leads many to conclude that the sense of taste operates normally only when the olfactory system is also in good ...





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US astronaut Timothy Creamer (L), Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov (C), and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi (R)

Astronauts to taste 'space sushi'

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Dec 03, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

US astronaut Timothy Creamer said on Thursday he was impatient to taste "space sushi" courtesy of his Japanese crewmate after they arrive on the International Space Station (ISS) later this month.


Dessert on your mind? Your muscles may be getting the message

Medicine & Health / Research

created Dec 01, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Even the anticipation of sweets may cause our muscles to start taking up more blood sugar, say researchers reporting in the December issue of Cell Metabolism. That message is delivered via neurons in the brain's hypothalamus contai ...


Marketing a 'spoonful of sugar'

Other Sciences / Social Sciences

created Dec 15, 2009 | popularity 3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Your kids won't wear their seatbelts, take their vitamins or brush their teeth? A new study by Tel Aviv University offers a simple formula that will get better compliance in the kid department -- and has implications for ...


Japan's 'space beer' sparkles among drinkers

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Dec 07, 2009 | popularity 3.2 / 5 (6) | comments 0

A Japanese brewer has come up with a beer that's truly out of this world -- one made with barley grown from a line of seeds that once orbited the Earth aboard the International Space Station.


People who 'see' numbers have better memories for dates

People who 'see' numbers have better memories for dates

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Dec 15, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 3

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new research project has shown that people who perceive numbers visually, and who see sequences of numbers as visual patterns, have better memories for dates and events in the past than ...


Flies like us: They can act like addicts, too

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Dec 10, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

When given the chance to consume alcohol at will, fruit flies behave in ways that look an awful lot like human alcoholism. That's according to a study published online on December 10th in Current Biology that is one of the ...


What's so funny about global warming?

Other Sciences / Other

created Dec 10, 2009 | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 1

Ian Leung has wanted to do something about global warming for almost two decades. Ever since he switched careers in 1991 from science advisor to the Ontario Ministry of Environment to pursue a career as an actor, the environment-and ...


Chicken of the sea? Tuna farming getting a boost (AP)

Chicken of the sea? Tuna farming getting a boost

Biology / Ecology

created Dec 05, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

(AP) -- Thousands of tuna, their silver bellies bloated with fat, swim frantically around in netted areas of a small bay, stuffing themselves until they grow twice as heavy as in the wild. Is this sushi's ...


You may be ready for online ritual suicide with the aid of a new website  that helps you kill your virtual identity

'Anti-social network' aims to be Facebook killer app

Technology / Internet

created Dec 10, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Facebook makes you despair? Social networking makes you want to end it all? You may be ready for online ritual suicide with the aid of a new website that helps you kill your virtual identity.


Researchers develop cheap, easy 'kitchen chemistry' to perform formerly complex synthesis

Chemistry / Analytical Chemistry

created Dec 04, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (12) | comments 0

A team at The Scripps Research Institute has made major strides in solving a problem that has been plaguing chemists for many years: how best to break carbon-hydrogen bonds and then to create new bonds to join molecules together. ...



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