Elsevier

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 26, Issue 4, April 1981, Pages 715-719
Physiology & Behavior

Gustatory reaction time in human adults

https://doi.org/10.1016/0031-9384(81)90149-9Get rights and content

Abstract

Reaction times to varying concentrations of the four basic taste stimuli (sucrose, NaCl, tartaric acid and quinine-HCl) were measured in twenty human adults. Reaction times decreased with increasing concentrations of solutions, and the relationships between the reaction time and the concentration are described by a rectangular hyperbola for all the four tastes. The reaction times to the strongest solutions used in this experiment were about 400 msec for NaCl and tartaric acid and about 700 msec for sucrose and quinine solutions. Since the reaction time to flow of water on the tongue surface was around 200 msec, we concluded that the minimum taste encoding time was 200 msec or less for the high concentrations of salt and acid solutions.

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  • Cited by (0)

    Funded in part by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education of Japan (No. 457458).

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