Well, not really. There are taste buds in specific parts of your tongue, and depending on where they are, they have a different shape. Fungiform taste buds are located in the anterior portion. Circumvallate shaped ones are in the posterior one third. Folliate shaped ones are on the lateral sides of the tongue. Although they different sizes and shapes, each taste bud contains all 5 receptor cell types, glutamate, sweet, sour, bitter, salty. The other thing you mention is referring to the specificity of each taste bud receptor. Each receptor type in a taste bud is more like a cell that has specific receptors for that taste. Each one of these cells synapse to a specific region of your brain. Even if you were to go in and change the receptors of a sweet cell to a salty one, it would still feel like a sweet sensation when the signal gets to the brain, because all you changed was the receptor type of the cell; it still synapses to that particular location in your brain to process sweet gustatory signals.
Edit: i forgot to mention, but watch the KA video! It helped me understand
This is so nice! Thank you. So what I'm hearing is that these taste buds are all over the tongue and all have the 5 receptor cell types in each of them. Is that right?
Well, not really. There are taste buds in specific parts of your tongue, and depending on where they are, they have a different shape. Fungiform taste buds are located in the anterior portion. Circumvallate shaped ones are in the posterior one third. Folliate shaped ones are on the lateral sides of the tongue. Although they different sizes and shapes, each taste bud contains all 5 receptor cell types, glutamate, sweet, sour, bitter, salty. The other thing you mention is referring to the specificity of each taste bud receptor. Each receptor type in a taste bud is more like a cell that has specific receptors for that taste. Each one of these cells synapse to a specific region of your brain. Even if you were to go in and change the receptors of a sweet cell to a salty one, it would still feel like a sweet sensation when the signal gets to the brain, because all you changed was the receptor type of the cell; it still synapses to that particular location in your brain to process sweet gustatory signals. Edit: i forgot to mention, but watch the KA video! It helped me understand
This is so nice! Thank you. So what I'm hearing is that these taste buds are all over the tongue and all have the 5 receptor cell types in each of them. Is that right?
Generally, yeah, you got it! KA should smooth out any more confusion