Abstract
The gustatory system informs humans and nonhuman animals about the nutritive and hedonic values of foods and beverages. Taste also prevents us from consuming potentially harmful substances. Taste buds are our peripheral sensory organs for gustation. Taste buds consist of collections of receptor cells that respond to compounds that elicit sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and umami tastes and transmit this information to higher centers in the brain. Recent research has uncovered many of the molecular mechanisms underlying the initial events of taste transduction and show that some degree of information processing takes place in taste buds.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | The Curated Reference Collection in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology |
Publisher | Elsevier Science Ltd. |
Pages | 887-893 |
Number of pages | 7 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780128093245 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2016 |
Keywords
- Bitter
- Salty
- Sour
- Sweet
- T1Rs
- T2Rs
- Taste receptors
- Transmitters
- Umami
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine(all)