Tongue’s Temperature Affects Taste, Researchers Report

Yale scientists say they can stimulate sweet, sour or salty tastes by manipulating the temperature of the tongue. By warming or cooling certain areas of the tongue, they said they can produce “thermal taste” similar to tastes caused by sugars, acids and other chemicals.

Barry Green and Alberto Cruz showed that nerves on the tongue that respond to chemicals in food also are vulnerable to temperature. But the nerves sensitive to temperature are only found in certain areas of the tongue. Sweetness is usually on the tip of the tongue while a sour taste is on the side and bitterness is in the back, they report in today’s Nature.

--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II