Psychology & Psychiatry

Is there a universal hierarchy of human senses?

Research at the University of York has shown that the accepted hierarchy of human senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell—is not universally true across all cultures.

Medical research

AI study reveals the tongue's unique surface

Artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D images of the human tongue have revealed that the surface of our tongues are unique to each of us, new findings suggest. The results offer an unprecedented insight into the biological make-up ...

Health

Sugar boosts cravings for fat, Drosophila study finds

People are eating too much sugar, and research increasingly suggests it is not just impacting metabolism, but also altering the perception of taste. Mattias Alenius' research team at Umeå University discovered that sugar ...

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Taste

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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