The Unexpectedly Familiar Way People Taste Water

Чер 30 2017

The Unexpectedly Familiar Way People Taste WaterWe don’t think about the taste of water very much, despite the fact that we’d have been dead long ago without a way to sense the substance that makes up 50 to 60 percent of our bodies. There is something, somewhere, in the mouth that tells us we are drinking it. Mouse research has previously indicated that drinking water triggers the firing of nerves that ferry taste information from the mouth to the brain. And now, scientists publishing in Nature Neuroscience have pinpointed a specific set of taste cells in mice that cause these nerves to fire. Surprisingly, they are cells we are already quite familiar with.