The most common misconception about our tongue is believing in the existence of a “tongue map”, which looks something like this :-
You must have been taught this “tongue map” some time in school.
This tongue map labels certain parts of the tongue, and states them to be responsible for different taste sensations (1-> bitter, 2-> sour, 3-> salty and 4-> sweet)
Actually, this is false.
This theory originated from a book written by Edwin Boring in 1942, where he plotted the taste thresholds for different parts of the tongue. This graph was misinterpreted by other authors, who started to believe that the tongue did not sense anything for a particular taste in a particular region, when the region represented merely a minima in the graph.
This theory was then so widely circulated that tongue map experiments (wherein participants had to record intensities of different tastes by placing food on different regions of the tongue) were used to grade high school students.
It was debunked in 1974 by Virginia Collings, who confirmed that taste exists on all parts of the tongue.
