The Unexpectedly Familiar Way People Taste Water
Research suggests that water is sensed by the same taste cells that detect sourness.
by Veronique Greenwood
Jun 30, 2017
2 minutes
We don’t think about the taste of water very much, despite the fact that we’d have been dead long ago without a way to sense the substance that makes up 50 to 60 percent of our bodies. There is something, somewhere, in the mouth that tells us we are drinking it. Mouse research has previously indicated that drinking water triggers the firing of nerves that ferry taste information from the have pinpointed a specific set of taste cells in mice that cause these nerves to fire. Surprisingly, they are cells we are already quite familiar with.
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