Chemicals Senses: It Tastes Good and Smells Even Better

Gustation

Taste (Gustation)•7.6 How do the senses of taste and smell work, and how are they alike?

How does the sense of taste work?• Tastants, chemicals in foods, are detected by taste buds, located in papilae.

• Each person has 5-10,000 taste buds which have sensory cells (50-100 per taste bud) for different chemical tastants (sugars, salts, acids).

• When the sensory cells are stimulated it sends a message down the nerve fibers to the thalamus.

The Five Basic Tastes

SOUR

BITTERSWEET

UMAMI

SALTY

Smell (Olfaction)

1. Molecules hit the epithelium 2. Activate the cilia3. Goes to olfactory bulb which sends message to brain