Wednesday

Tongue

Did you ever think that, without the tongue, you would have been unable to taste all the deliciousness of the natural world? Can the scientists create and install such a tool in your body which would make you taste things in the absence of tongue? Maybe the invention of such an instrument is possible, it can never work as perfectly as your natural human tongue.Taking into account the value of human tongue, this small muscular organ in your mouth cavity is a wonderful blessing of nature. In addition to providing a taste of the food, the tongue helps in manipulation of food for mastication. Its third important function is to help in the swallowing of meal.
 As you can observe in the tongue pictures, the human tongue has got a rough texture. It is the presence of tiny bumps, called papillae, all over the dorsal surface of the tongue that make it look so rough. The surfaces of the papillae, on the other hand, contain thousands of taste buds. The taste buds are actually a collection of the nerve-like cells. Nerves develop a connection between taste buds and the brain.

The upper most layer of tissue on the human tongue is that of mucosa. The mucosa keeps it moist. It also makes the tongue a bit slippery to touch.

The ability of tongue to taste food is because of the presence of taste buds on its surface. Meanwhile, different parts of the tongue sense only a specific taste. Different types of receptor cells help to distinguish between various sorts of differently tasting substances, such as sweet, sour, bitter, spicy and salty. On the tip, you will find taste buds for sensing sweet. Bind the apex and along the sides, there are receptors for tasting bitter, sour and salt.

Dorsum – the upper surface of the tongue – contains lots of lingual papillae. The papillae house the taste buds and the taste receptors. These receptors assist in the sensation of taste of different types of dietary components which come into contact with them. They are basically of two types, that is, sweet taste receptors and bitter taste receptors.

In addition to enabling you sense the deliciousness of the food, the human tongue also performs a number of other important functions. For example, the additional tongue function involves the mastication of food and the act of swallowing it. Do you know any other interesting tongue function? The list of the some of the additional functionalities of the tongue is given below:

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