WORLD OF SCIENCE
Tasty tingles
DR. T. V. PADMA
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While some receptors carry sensations of taste others carry sensations like pain and pressure to the brain.
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Why do we have names for tastes other than the basic ones mentioned - such as "spicy", for example?
Not all these receptors carry taste sensations to the brain — some also carry other sensations to the brain. For example, receptors can sense pain, pressure and temperature, and these sensations travel through the appropriate nerves, to the brain. Something that we feel is "spicy" actually comes from mild sensations of pain and heat carried by the nerves that sense these irritations. Chilli peppers are spicy and hot because they have a chemical called "capsaicin" which activates receptors that sense pain and heat. That's part of the reason that getting chilli on your hands or worse still, in your eyes, can cause a lot of pain and irritation to the skin.
Hot and cool
That isn't to say that chillies are bad. Chillies have vitamins and they also kill some germs, which might be why many tropical cultures use a lot of chilli in their dishes — it helps preserve food.
Bite into a chilli and what do you do? Find something like curd - which is a "cooling" dish — to soothe your burnt tongue. Something else that sends a sensation of cold to the brain is mint. Try sucking on a peppermint sweet and you'll be sure to notice that it is not only sweet, but also "cooling".
Of course, part of what you like and dislike has to do with what your brain decides is nice or not nice — and that's at least partly based on your culture and the food you ate as a child.
Another interesting titbit about taste — taste can change as you grow (often it dulls as a person becomes older) — which is partly why children often dislike vegetables, while adults like them. We're probably not all equal in the matter of taste, either — scientists suspect that some of us may be "supertasters" who have more than the average number of taste buds, while others may be "nontasters" who don't taste as well as normal. Most of us, of course, fall in between those two extremes!
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