This has been bugging me – someone (whom I would ordinarily believe implicitly) told me the theory about areas on the tongue for tasting (i.e. the salty area, the sweet area, the sour area, etc.) has been debunked. Now, when I do a search I still get ‘areas of the tongue’ but he was adamant that it was debunked in 2001.
Anyone have any cites to support or deny?
Tasteless in Texas
I’m curious too… but in a way in makes sense. I associate certain sour of bitter tastes with the back of my tongue. Maybe i’m just weird.
Old joke about the coed’s comments to the professor not noticing the sweetness of semen on the front of the tongue… I received several comments from female friends that it seemed true.
And as RyanD004 posts, if you think about biting into a lemon, doesn’t the very back of your tongue tingle?
I’ll vote for myth.
I can’t find a cite, but I can confirm that your friend is correct…a recent study did finally put this old myth to rest. I remember in high school being taught this theory that the tongue has different areas for sensing different tastes–sweet at front, sour on the sides, salty in the middle, and bitter at the back. We even had to do a lab experiment where we dried our tongues and placed various compounds on the different areas to see if we could taste them. I immediately knew that the idea the tongue had different tastebuds clustered in different areas was false, because I could taste everything at the tip of my tongue–sweet, salty, bitter, sour–and I didn’t notice that the other areas (like the back of my tongue, which didn’t register the tastes as intensely) did not seem to discriminate among the chemicals. It’s hard to believe a theory like this lasted so long, even being taught in schools without any evidence to back it up!
I thought there was a Cecil column or Staff Report on this but I only found this when searching.
IIRC, it was debunked in 1900. So it is really, really old glurge that still appeared in my kids high school textbooks.
Right. I think calls for a live test. I invite the SO to a test, strictly in the name of science of course, to prove/disprove this point.
Of course in the name of science, the test should be repeated several times to ensure consistency of, uh, results. Yeah that’s it.
CasperQ, Response?
I saw something about the “taste map” being bogus on the Discovery channel last year. Alas I can’t cite you air the air date or the cameraperson’s name.
I just read this chapter in the book Bad Medicine but I don’t remember what the author’s sources were. Will check again when I get home.
DLurker, you may have your acronyms confused? ‘SO’ would be representative of a significant other, i.e. your wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend…
And I’ll let the SDMBers debate this one, though I’d still like to see a cite pointing to research (haven’t checked all of them in the thread yet - might be there already).
In case you meant me… I’m not a lab rat! 
** CasperQ **. Thank you for the correction… I meant OP. As in Original Poster.
Well, I tried. 
Hey I just noticed, she gave me tongue… Wait I wasn’t ready…
Hey I just noticed, CasperQ gave me tongue… Wait I wasn’t ready…