A new study recently published in the journal, Nature, could possibly settle years of debate on how the brain perceives taste.

Scientists from the United States have discovered the brain has specialist neurons that correspond to the five taste categories, namely bitter, sour, sweet, salty and umami.

Like Us on Facebook

A team from Columbia University showed that the separate taste sensors on the tongue had matching partners in the brain.

This debunks the notion that sweet tastes can only be tasted on the tip of the tongue since it appears the roughly 8,000 taste buds scattered over the tongue are capable of sensing the full suite of all tastes.

There are specialized cells within the taste buds that are tuned to either one of the five taste categories.

Upon detecting the signal, a message is sent to the brain. What happens when it gets to the brain is another matter altogether.

With these findings, scientists hope to use these new pieces of information to help reverse the loss of taste sensation in elderly folk.

Professor Charles Zuker said the ageing population no longer enjoy eating. He says this is a devastating thing. Scientists believe this is because of the taste cells in the tongue weaken.

The stem cells in the tongue produce new taste cells every fortnight. This ability weakens as people get older, however.

"These findings provide an interesting avenue to help deal with this problem because you have a clear understanding of how taste is functioning so you could imagine ways of enhancing that function," Prof Zuker added.

This includes making existing cells more responsive so as to send a much stronger signal to the brain.

Tagsbrain, Taste, Tongue, taste buds