Nº 038 · Body · 50 sec

Do you taste sweet only with the tip of your tongue?

The famous tongue map with zones for sweet, sour, salty and bitter is a misunderstanding.

Textbook drawing of the tongue with papillae and taste buds — Illustration: OpenStax · CC BY 4.0 · Original

Your guess

Where on your tongue do you taste sweetness?

A misunderstanding from 1942

In 1901 the researcher David P. Hänig measured how sensitive different areas of the tongue are. In 1942 the Harvard psychologist Edwin Boring redrew those curves for a book. Those curves later turned into the map with fixed zones.

Long since disproved

In 1974 Virginia Collings revisited the question and confirmed: all tastes exist on all parts of the tongue. Even so, the map is still taught in some schools.