Questão 23 - Prova V3 - Fuvest 2026

     Think  for  a  minute about  the little bumps on your tongue. You probably saw a diagram of those taste bud arrangements once  in a  biology  textbook  —  sweet sensors at the tip, salty on either side, sour behind them,  bitter  in the back.

     But  the  idea  that  specific tastes  are  confined  to  certain areas of the tongue is a myth that “persists  in  the  collective consciousness, despite decades of  research  debunking  it”, according  to  a  review  published  this  month  in  The  New England Journal of Medicine. Also wrong: the notion that taste is limited to the mouth.

     The old diagram, which has been used in many textbooks over the years, originated in a study published by David Hanig, a  German  scientist,  in  1901.  But  the  scientist  was not suggesting that various tastes are segregated on the tongue. He  was  actually  measuring  the  sensitivity  of  different  areas, said  Paul  Breslin,  a  researcher  at  Monell  Chemical  Senses Center  in  Philadelphia.  “What  he  found  was  that  you  could detect  things  at a  lower concentration  in one  part  relative  to another,” Dr. Breslin said. The tip of the tongue, for example, is dense with sweet sensors but contains the others as well.

     The  map’s  mistakes  are  easy  to  confirm.  If  you  place  a lemon wedge at the tip of your tongue, it will taste sour, and if you put a bit of honey toward the side, it will be sweet.

     The perception of taste is a remarkably complex process, starting from  that  first encounter  with the tongue. Taste  cells have  a  variety  of  sensors  that  signal  the  brain  when  they encounter nutrients or toxins. For some tastes, tiny pores in cell membranes let taste chemicals in.

     Such taste receptors aren’t limited to the tongue; they are also found in the gastrointestinal tract, liver, pancreas, fat cells, brain, muscle cells, thyroid and lungs. We don’t generally think of these organs as tasting anything, but they use the receptors to pick up the presence of various molecules and metabolize them,  said  Diego  Bohórquez,  a  self-described  gut-brain neuroscientist at Duke University. For example, when the gut notices sugar in food, it tells the brain to alert other organs to get ready for digestion.

New York Times. May 29, 2024. Adaptado.

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