what exactly is taste? Just like vibration or light, what does a thing have or lack to determine taste and how do we process it?

Question

what exactly is taste? Just like vibration or light, what does a thing have or lack to determine taste and how do we process it?

In: 111

Answer 1

Vision is more or less just four sensors. One senses how similar to blue light a frequency is, one senses how similar to green, one to red, and the last just detects any of them.

Taste is similar, in a way. You have sensors for all sorts of chemicals, and those sensors will detect anything else that happens to be the right shape to interact with them. Really, what you’re sensing is just “how well does this molecule interact with my smell receptors”.