| The Physiology of Taste | |
| Grade Level: High School | |
| Subject Area: Neurobiology and Physiology | |
| This lab only
looks at taste. However, as you know, taste and smell are closely related.
Taste and smell belong to our chemical sensing system known as the
chemsosenses. This complicated process of taste begins when tiny molecules
are released and sensed by gustatory or taste cells. The taste cells are
clustered in taste buds primarily on the tongue. Many of the small bumps,
known as papillae, can be seen on the tongue. At the base of each of these
bumps are areas called taste buds that contain taste receptor cells. Each
bud is a separate entity set off from surrounding epithelium by what is
known as a CT capsule. There are four basic taste sensations, sweet,
salt, sour, and bitter. Specific regions of the tongue have
specific associations with these sensations. However, there are no
morphological differences that correlate with functional ones. Therefore,
you cannot detect the type of a taste bud simply by looking at it.
The purpose of this experiment is to explore taste and the concept of threshold. Students will also look at the relationship between taste and the choice of the foods they eat. This lab is designed for an entry level Biology/Life Science class. |
|
|
Click
here to download this laboratory activity. It is in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)
format. (see below if you are not familiar with pdf format or Adobe Acrobat) |
| Contributed
By: Anthony Kilyanek 1997 APS Explorations in Biomedicine Summer Research Teacher Lame Deer High School; Lame Deer, MT Summer Research Host: Dr. Gregory
Florant |
What is Adobe Acrobat? Adobe
Acrobat software allows documents created in Adobe's Portable Document
Format (.pdf) to be displayed and printed from any computer, regardless of
the fonts or software used to create the original. To learn more about
Adobe Acrobat, visit the Adobe web site at http://www.adobe.com/.
|
Explorations in Biomedicine |
