The story unlocks once you make your call.
A myth. Every taste bud can sense every taste.
Where it came from
In 1901 the German scientist David Hänig measured small differences in how sensitive various parts of the tongue were to each taste. In 1942 the Harvard psychologist Edwin Boring redrew his data as a graph that made those small differences look like separate zones.
Textbooks turned the graph into the familiar map with sweet at the tip and bitter at the back, and generations of pupils dutifully “confirmed” it in class.
What’s actually true
Taste receptors for sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami are found in taste buds all over the tongue. Sensitivity varies slightly from place to place, but you can taste sugar perfectly well at the back of your tongue.
Further reading
- Wikipedia: Tongue map
- Chandrashekar et al., “The receptors and cells for mammalian taste”, Nature (2006)