Chemical Senses: Smell and Taste

These flashcards cover key concepts related to the chemical senses of smell and taste, including their definitions and functions.

Gustation

The sense of taste, involving the perception of flavors through the tongue.

Five basic taste receptors

The five basic types of tastes that humans can distinguish: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami.

Umami

A taste sensation that is savory, often associated with glutamate.

Gustatory cortex

The area of the brain responsible for naming and memorizing different food flavors.

Amygdala

A brain structure that influences emotions and can cause feelings of nausea based on food smells.

Olfaction

The sense of smell, which allows us to detect thousands of different odors.

Olfactory receptors

About 350 types of receptors responsible for detecting various odorants in the environment.

Odor encoding

The process through which an odor is identified by the activation of multiple olfactory receptor types.