Tongue in Biological News

Clinical trial shows quadriplegics can operate powered wheelchair with tongue drive system

... wheelchair or control a mouse cursor using simple tongue movements can be operated by individuals with ... "This clinical trial has validated that the tongue Drive system is intuitive and quite simple for ... were able to easily remember and correctly issue tongue commands to play computer games and drive a ...

Taking a cue from breath fresheners, researcher develops new method for taste testing

... these strips, place them on a desired area of the tongue and allow saliva to dissolve them without causing ... of the tongue." Since different parts of the tongue may respond to different tastes, or may respond ... be used to develop detailed taste maps of the tongue surface, a project he plans to examine in the ...

Engineers create 3-D model to help biologists combat blue tongue virus

... A large 3D model of the Blue tongue virus has been created by WMG engineering researchers at the University of ... herds of sheep and cattle. Professor Mertens said: "Blue tongue represents the worst threat to agriculture this country has seen for 20 ...

Toad research could leapfrog to new muscle model

... shorten in the lower jaw, and the opening of the jaws causes the tongue to stretch by its own momentum. "When a toad or chameleon captures prey ... at the speed, energy storage and power of muscle. We learned how a frog tongue will store energy and release it in a powerful burst." At ASU's Human ...

Airway cells use 'tasting' mechanism to detect and clear harmful substances

... damage. The study, published online July 23 in Science Express, shows that receptors for bitter compounds that are found in taste buds on the tongue also are found in hair-like protrusions on airway cells. In addition, the scientists showed that, unlike taste cells on the tongue, these airway ...

Nutricia launches Nutra Neocate, weaning product designed for cows’ milk protein allergy

... but also provides weaning infants with a choice and variety of different foods, tastes and textures they need to help with their mouth and tongue co-ordination for speech development.4 "We are delighted to introduce Neocate Nutra as the first and only amino acid-based weaning product for ...

American Chemical Society's weekly PressPac -- May 27, 2009

... Several companies are developing additives to mask this bitterness. Other approaches include developing smaller salt particles so that the tongue perceives their taste more quickly. Other researchers are exploring oil-based salt emulsions that provide an enhanced perception of saltiness while ...

Are you okay to kiss?

... in the saliva and chop off sugar residues to produce volatile proteins. On the lower layer in the biofilm, which could roughly be compared to one's tongue or inner lining of the mouth, reside the known and established Gram-negative bacteria. Biomarkers, like the ones used by Prof. Rosenberg's new ...

New diagnostic advance seen for head, throat cancer

... five times higher in the "poorly differentiated" tumor cells that caused the most deadly types of squamous cell carcinomas in the larynx, throat, tongue and other parts of the head. There was a high correlation between greater CTIP2 expression and the aggressive nature of the cancer. Head and neck ...

Scientists discover why teeth form in a single row

... outside of the normal row, but also that Osr2 is expressed in increasing concentration in the jaw mesenchyme as you move from the cheek toward the tongue in the mouse embryo, the exact opposite of the BMP4 concentration gradient. Osr2 restricts Bmp4 expression to the tooth mesenchyme under the dental ...

Nicotine activates more than just the brain's pleasure pathways

... then measured nerve activity in the chorda tympani (CT), which is a branch of the facial nerve that serves the taste buds in the front of the tongue and found that activity in CT nerve fibers increased when nicotine was put on the mice's tongues. Looking ahead, Oliveira-Maia said that drugs ...

January-February GSA Bulletin media highlights

... et al. constructed a 325 meter composite lithostratigraphic section of the Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation and the Lower Paleocene Ludlow and tongue River Members of the Fort Union Formation in the Little Missouri River valley of North Dakota, USA. They analyzed paleomagnetic samples from nine of ...

Stomach ulcer bug causes bad breath

... of 102 people (15.7%) had H. pylori in their mouths. "Halitosis is a common problem in humans, and bad breath is largely caused by periodonitis, tongue debris, poor oral hygiene and badly fitted fillings," said Dr. Suzuki. "Bacteria produce volatile compounds that smell unpleasant, including hydrogen ...

When fish talk, scientists listen

... you do," says Bass, the paper's lead author. The way our brains work is also similar. Just as we have neurons that coordinate when our larynx and tongue change shape to produce words, toadfish and midshipman orchestrate the movement of muscles attached to their swim bladder to produce grunts and hums. ...

What it's like to be a bat

... comparisons. According to Moss, bats engage in vocal-motor behaviors to generate signals to probe the environment, while some blind humans produce tongue clicks to generate sounds for echolocation. Both bats and humans engage in so-called "motor behaviors" that shape their perceptions of the world. ...

Birth of an iceberg

... in the area between September 2006 and October 2007. The Pine Island Glacier is visible stretching from the right of the image to the centre. The tongue of Pine Island is shown moving inland between September 2006 and March 2007. Between April and May 2007, the detached iceberg in front of Pine Island ...

Smiths Detection to launch a portable diagnostic system for foot-and-mouth disease and avian flu

... at international conferences. Smiths Detection is working to develop additional assays for the same instrument, including one to detect the Blue tongue virus. Stephen Phipson, Group Managing Director of Smiths Detection, said: Our links with some of the worlds leading academic institutions enhance ...

Your gut has taste receptors

... Shirazi-Beechey and Dr. Zaza Kokrashvili reasoned that the sugar sensors of the tongues taste buds might also be there in the gut. Sweet taste in the tongue depends on the taste receptor T1R3 and the taste G protein gustducin. The small intestine is the major site where dietary sugars are absorbed ...

Gene key to taste bud development identified

... stem cells on the surface of the embryonic tongue and in the back of the mouth to transform into ... insights into the interactions between SOX2 and tongue stem cells during embryonic development, but also ... the mice, they noticed that specific areas on the tongue and in the back of the mouth lit up, in addition ...

Ohio University researchers discover evolutionary oddity in flamingos

... swish their heads from side-to-side. Their large tongue acts like a piston, sucking water into the front ... pushing it out the sides. Fringed plates on the tongue trap algae and crustaceans in the circulating ... mouth. "We suspect this stabilizes the mouth and tongue and helps with the peculiar way that flamingos ...

Scientists solve sour taste proteins

... proteins in the taste buds on the surface of the tongue that are responsible for detecting sour tastes. ... glutamate or MSG). Each taste bud on the tongue contains separate, distinct subsets of cells that ... brain would interpret the signals coming from the tongue to tell the difference between lemons and ...

Columbine flowers develop long nectar spurs in response to pollinators

... columbines, evolution of the length of nectar spurs--the long tubes leading to plants' nectar--happens in a way that allows flowers to match the tongue lengths of the pollinators that drink their nectar, biologists have found. The researchers were Justen Whittall of the University of California at ...

Synthetic peptide targets latent papilloma virus infections

... HIV in blood cells. The virus can transform infected cells and make them proliferate into nipple-like warts. Unlike unsightly warts on the skin, tongue or penis, warts in the cervix are often flat and easily overlooked unless laboratory staining is used to find signs of pathology, as in Pap ....

Researchers show that veins stiffen as we age

... the veins, such as having one foot immersed in cold water, or while squeezing a handgrip. They also administered a nitroglycerin pill under the tongue of each participant to relax the veins. In each case, they found that the tests had no effect on the response of the veins in either age group. ...

Sensory feedback during speech: The brain attunes to more than just sound

... of this sort that might be relevant during speech include those that inform the brain of the openness of the jaw or the changing positions of the tongue or lips. To investigate how such somatosensory cues are used during speech production, the researchers in the new work were able to dissociate ...

Teenager moves video icons just by imagination

... what brain signals correlate to these movements. They then asked the boy to play a simple, two-dimensional Space Invaders game by actually moving his tongue and hand. He was then asked to imagine the same movements, but not to actually perform them with his hands or tongue. When he saw the cursor in the ...

Researchers examine why food tastes bad to chemotherapy recipients

... of civil and environmental engineering (CEE). Dietrich believes there are two components to the metallic flavor –?the taste of metal ions on the tongue and the production of metal-catalyzed odors in the mouth that create a retro-nasal effect. "I am attempting to gain a better understanding of the ...

Variation in bitter-taste receptor gene increases risk for alcoholism

... led by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has found that a gene variant for a bitter-taste receptor on the tongue is associated with an increased risk for alcohol dependence.The research team studied DNA samples from 262 families, all of which have at least three ...

Living taste cells produced outside the body

... can promote recovery." The findings are reported in an online issue of Chemical Senses. Taste receptor cells are located in taste buds on the tongue and in the throat. These cells contain the receptors that detect taste stimuli: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami (savory). Each taste receptor ...

Purdue researchers find key to rice blast fungus

... plant and how the plant might fight a fungal invasion. These feelers are called G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCR). In humans, GPCRs are found on the tongue and in the nose and are part of what makes foods taste different. The scientists discovered that rice blast fungus has more than 40 GPCRs that ...

Bitter or sweet? The same taste bud can tell the difference

... In the current study, the researchers conducted their experiments on taste bud cells taken from the rear of the tongues of rats. (The back of the tongue has the highest concentration of taste buds.) They isolated single cells from individual taste buds. They attached very small, fine electrodes to ...

Canada approves marijuana-based pain spray

... Dr. William J. McIlroy, National Medical Advisor, MS Society of Canada. How Sativex works Sativex is administered through a spray pump under the tongue or on the inside of the cheek, providing reliable, self-administered pain relief. The spray formulation allows for more flexible dosing than an oral ...

Discovery may lead to better Candidiasis drug

... being held in Baltimore. Candidiasis also is known as thrush, a disease characterized by whitish spots and ulcers on the membranes of the mouth, tongue and throat. It affects primarily people with weakened immune systems caused by antibiotics, chemotherapy or by diseases such as AIDS. Thrush also ...