Each of the basic tastes, she explained, is perceived by taste buds in a unique region on the tongue: sweet at the tip, salty and sour at the sides, bitter at the back. She gave the girls Q-tips ...

The tongue is covered in lots of little bumps. On the walls and grooves of these bumps are thousands of tiny taste buds, too small for the human eye to see. The buds sense the taste of everything ...

In the mirror I see a smattering of pink bumps—each hiding as many as 15 taste buds apiece—against the ... Bartoshuk zeroed in on the tongue's anatomy. She found that people have different ...