Abstract
Despite its contribution to food perception, lingual tactile sensitivity has been understudied. We hypothesized that sensitivity to threshold and suprathreshold tactile stimuli varies in the population and sought to determine proximate sources of variability. Forty-eight adults were tested for lingual threshold sensitivity via a modified letter identification task and suprathreshold sensitivity via estimation of stimulus size using magnitude estimation. In addition, taste bud density on the anterior tip of each panelist’s tongue was estimated by counting the number of fungiform papillae in a 0.317 cm2 circumscribed area. Lingual tactile thresholds were significantly impacted by age group as subjects 40 years or older had higher thresholds than those in their 20s. Moreover, threshold sensitivity increased with increasing fungiform papillae count. Suprathreshold estimates of size were not affected by age group, sex, or fungiform papillae count.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Blansh del Portal, Elizabeth Green, and Yun Chen for technical assistance and Kevin Wolf from the Ohio State University Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering for printing the thermoplastic letter stimuli used in this experiment. Research support was provided by state and federal funds appropriated to the Ohio State University, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. Elements of this study were presented in abstract form at the Institute of Food Technologists annual meeting and served in partial fulfillment of the thesis requirement for RGB.
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Bangcuyo, R.G., Simons, C.T. Lingual tactile sensitivity: effect of age group, sex, and fungiform papillae density. Exp Brain Res 235, 2679–2688 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-5003-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-5003-7