In the 1980s and 1990s, however, research at Yale University, Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, and the University of Connecticut, and elsewhere demonstrated that the “tongue map” explanation of how we taste was, in fact, totally wrong. As it turns out, the map was a misinterpretation and mistranslation of research conducted in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century.
Today, leading taste researchers, such as Dr. Linda Bartoshuk of Yale University School of Medicine, believe that taste buds are not grouped according to specialty. According to Bartoshuk’s research, sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, and sourness can be tasted everywhere in the mouth, although they may be perceived at slightly different intensities at different sites. Moreover, the mechanism at work is not place, but time. It’s not that you taste sweetness at the tip of your tongue, but rather that you register that perception first. Similarly, bitterness is not perceived at the back of your mouth, rather, you taste it a few milliseconds after sweetness.
