The experience of indulging in your favorite foods involves not only tasting flavors but also feeling the textures sweep across your tongue. Most of the bumps on the tongue’s surface are filiform papillae, which enable tactical sensation. In this scanning electron microscope image of the human tongue, magnified 1,500 times, the papillae ap­pear as cone-shaped buds. “They sense being deflected by something that touches them, including pressure from a heavy liquid,” says Robert F. Margolskee, associate director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. He adds that the papillae appear to be scaly be­cause they are con­stantly in a state of shed­ding old cells and growing new ones.

This article was originally published with the title What Is It?.

2 Comments

1. 1. Mike Barry 06:53 PM 2/18/12

   Makes my mouth water!

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. rgcorrgk 03:14 AM 2/19/12

   Love a photo quiz! After studying the picture carefully the answer was right on the tip of my tongue (metaphorically, as the buds were scalded off the actual tip of my tongue years ago by the approximately 117,000 cups of hot coffee consumed to date).
   
   PS: My grandmother, from the old county, started me on coffee at the age of three.
   
   Richard Carlson
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this