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The Human Body:
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Tongue
The main function of the tongue is to help one to taste the food one consumes. The tongue consists as many as 10,000 taste buds for people to taste perfectly. Most of them are on the tongue but a few lies at the back of the throat. The 4 basic tastes are sweet, sour, salty and bitter, however when one consumes, it’s usually a mixture of these tastes. Taste doesn’t just depend on the taste buds but also on how the food looks or smells. When we place food in out mouths, a series of actions occurs. Firstly, the food/drink dissolves in the saliva. The dissolved food then enters little pores on the papillae on the tongue. Papillae are thousand of little bumps on the tongue. There are 4 types- Vallate(back of tongue, Fungiform(edges and tips of tongue), Foliform(all over tongue) and Filiform( all over tongue). Around the papillae are groups of taste buds. The chemical that hit the buds causes signals to be sent from the buds via nerves to taste centres in the brain and so, the taste in identified.
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