Question

The tongue of a person is exposed to a high salty taste then.
A. The person learns to taste salty things better
B. Loves tasting salty things
C. Hates tasting salty things
D. Fails to taste a less salty things just after the exposure

Answer 1

Taste buds have taste receptors or also called gustatory receptors which are a kind of sensory receptors and the gustatory cortex is responsible for the perception of the taste. They are located on papillae structures and there are a total of four types of papillae present, out of which humans only have three.

Complete step by step answer:
Taste receptors can mainly sense five types of tastes such as sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness, and savoriness where the sweet, bitter, and savoriness is triggered as the molecules bind to the G protein-coupled receptors while saltiness and sourness are perceived when alkali metals or hydrogen ions enter taste buds.
Circumvallate papillae are arranged in a circular shape in front of the sulcus terminalis of the tongue. Only 10 to 14 of these papillae are present in humans at the back of the oral part of the tongue in the shape of a V and have around 100 taste buds along the side of whorls. Fungiform papillae are mushroom-shaped and have taste buds in the middle or on the cleft of the papillae. They are innervated by the facial nerve and are present on the dorsal side of the tongue and also on the sides and filiform papillae do not have taste buds.
As mentioned in the question, if the tongue of a person is exposed to a high salty taste then the tongue fails to taste a less salty thing just after exposure because the taste receptors on the surface of the tongue get adapted to the salty taste that mainly occurs at cerebral cortex level and also sometimes excess of ligand present on the receptors can desensitize them.
Hence, the correct option is D.

Note:
Cations such as Na+, K+, or Li+ and are directly detected by cation influx into glial-like cells via leak channels causing depolarization of the cell that ultimately leads to the salty taste whereas, cations like NH+, Ca2+ give a bitter rather than a salty taste.