The Tongue Map
From the Ken Jennings Blog:
In our continuing series of Dopey Things Your Teachers Lied About: the tongue map!
You remember the tongue map from elementary school? Sweet in the front, salty on the sides, etc.? Well, it isn’t true. It comes from a misinterpreted graph in a mistranslated German psychologist’s paper from 1901. And scientists have known about the mistake for like 30 years! Which means when my teachers were telling me about the tongue map, while I was putting pretzels and lemon juice and baking chocolate on different points of my tongue and nodding sagely at the difference…there was no difference. You can taste all tastes (oh, and there’s been more than four since 1909) pretty much equally well on all parts of the tongue.
Mindy felt bad about this because she has done this particular psychosomatic “experiment” with kindergarteners before. You’re part of the problem, Mindy! Gangway for science!
The Ken Jennings blog has got to be one of my favorite places on the interent. Learn cool things all the time and he is funny as hell. Ken Jennings is the man. 'Nodding sagely' cracks me up...
Gangway for science! :)
In our continuing series of Dopey Things Your Teachers Lied About: the tongue map!
You remember the tongue map from elementary school? Sweet in the front, salty on the sides, etc.? Well, it isn’t true. It comes from a misinterpreted graph in a mistranslated German psychologist’s paper from 1901. And scientists have known about the mistake for like 30 years! Which means when my teachers were telling me about the tongue map, while I was putting pretzels and lemon juice and baking chocolate on different points of my tongue and nodding sagely at the difference…there was no difference. You can taste all tastes (oh, and there’s been more than four since 1909) pretty much equally well on all parts of the tongue.
Mindy felt bad about this because she has done this particular psychosomatic “experiment” with kindergarteners before. You’re part of the problem, Mindy! Gangway for science!
The Ken Jennings blog has got to be one of my favorite places on the interent. Learn cool things all the time and he is funny as hell. Ken Jennings is the man. 'Nodding sagely' cracks me up...
Gangway for science! :)
Leave a Comment
ABetterLife on
I gotta admit, I'm definitely noticing a difference in the middle from the sides. Maybe that's because I scorched it on Pizza last night.
phoenix on
Dude, I always kinda thought that was a scam. I couldn't ever taste one thing more on a particular part of my tongue, and I have a sensitive tongue, too! I can detect a mushroom in the cheese on a piece of pizza instantly like no man's business! (Self preservation...they make me gag).
