Why can’t you taste anything when you plug your nose?

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Why can’t you taste anything when you plug your nose?

In: Biology

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

A large part of what your brain does with the signals sent to it by the tastebuds is actually a hack where it makes assumptions from signals sent from the smell receptors! Our brains take a lot of shortcuts with the senses.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because taste is mainly made up of substances that can only be picked up by the receptors in the nose. Our tongue is only useful for a handful of them such as sweet, sour, bitter, salty, etc.

You can try this at home: make a solution of 1 parts sugar and 9 parts water, taste it with you nose plugged, and compare it without plugging your nose. It’ll taste very different.

Anonymous 0 Comments

How did you figure this out?, It makes sense but how and why

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Because your nose is around 60-70% responsible for ‘taste’ the food you eat releases chemicals that travel up to your nose. Receptors there pick up those chemicals and signal them to your brain