New discovery: Human tongue can feel the taste of water

From ancient times to now, scientists have always tried to find out whether the tongue of mammals can taste the taste of water. After decades of research, they finally found the answer.

Researchers have found evidence that the mammalian tongue has evolved to recognize water - the sixth flavor in addition to the five basic flavors that the tongue can sense.

"The tongue can detect many different elements that produce tastants such as sodium, sugar, and amino acids through perception ," said Yuki Oka, head of research at the California Institute of Technology Research. .

"However, the mechanism of tongue action in the process of identification is still an unanswered mystery. Thanks to the discovery of many insects that can sense the taste of water, we have come to a Hypothesis: Like insects, mammals also have a mechanism that can help it identify the taste of a colorless liquid '.

In 330 BC, Aristotle - the great philosopher, scientist of ancient Greece, claimed that water was a colorless, odorless, tasteless entity and that it was merely a means of washing. drift the taste we eat before. According to him, after drinking water, the taste of the dishes we have eaten will taste different from the beginning.

The tongue can sense the taste of water.(Photo: Irina Bg).

Recently, many of the results of tests show that part of the brain will react when we drink water. This result makes scientists assume that there are some flavors that the brain can recognize even when the tongue cannot.

Oka and his team have just found evidence that: taste buds on mammalian tongues can affect the subject's ability to sense water.

Experts have conducted many tests on white mice; At the same time during the experiment, they measured the electrical response from taste receptor cells (TRCs) on the mouse blades when they drank pure water and when they used a number of different popular tastants.

As originally anticipated by experts, mouse taste receptors respond significantly to the five basic tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami - sweet meat. In addition, scientists have found that some cells react when mice drink water.

Dhruv Zocchi, a member of the research team, said: "This finding is very interesting, it shows that some receptor cells are able to detect the taste of colorless liquid '.

Next, the team decided to disable some TCRs to check whether the mice still responded to the flavors when the flavor of the corresponding nerve was blocked.

As expected, when the expert blocked the saline TCRs group ; The neurons of mice no longer react when they eat salt, but still react normally when they eat sugar.

More surprising, when scientists block the group of sour TCRs; besides the sourness, the mouse also loses the ability to sense the whole country. Oka asserted : 'Research results show that water can be felt through sour taste receptors '.

To reinforce this hypothesis, the team did an interesting experiment. They set up a light source capable of stimulating sour taste cells in the mouse body and projecting it down to a rodent or drinking water. Oddly enough, the thirsty mouse thought it was wrong that the light source was water and tried to "drink" the drink to get that blue light. Some mice even licked light nozzles continuously over 2,000 times in 10 minutes to relieve thirst.

"Rodents that are unable to recognize the blue light are just illusions of water, they will still misunderstand and continue to drink for a long time to relieve thirst ," said Emily Underwood, team member. said.

Scientists have not yet conducted tests on real human bodies.

'Although signals from TRCs in the tongue may stimulate mammals to drink water, their brains will not use these signals to decide when to stop drinking.'

The sourness has always been perceived as a very specific and sometimes flavorful taste to humans, but why is it directly related to mammalian water perception?

"The results of the study raise a question: What information about flavor is relayed to the brain by sour taste cells?" , Zocchi said.

"It is possible that the TCRs taste sour not directly related to feeling the unpleasant taste that we often feel; but instead, they can create a number of different flavors when stimulated - like such water '.

Currently, scientists have not yet conducted tests on real human bodies; so we can't be sure whether the human tongue senses water thanks to the TCRs taste like rats. However, this study shows that our level of understanding of mammal taste is still too simple and narrow.