What are taste buds ???
Taste buds contain the receptors for taste. They are located around the small structures on the upper surface of the tongue, soft palate, upper esophagus and epiglottis, which are called papillae.These structures are involved in detecting the five (known) elements of taste perception: salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami. Small openings in the tongue epithelium, called taste pores, parts of the food dissolved in saliva come into contact with taste receptors. These are located on top of the taste receptor cells that constitute the taste buds. The taste receptor cells send information detected by clusters of various receptors and ion channels to the gustatory areas of the brain via the seventh, ninth and tenth cranial nerves.On average, the human tongue has 2,000–8,000 taste buds. The majority of taste buds on the tongue sit on raised protrusions of the tongue surface called papillae. There are four types of papillae present in the human tongue: Fungiform papillae - as the name s...