The Tongue Illuminated
A roadmap to your favorite gustatory muscle.
Shown here are the gustatory nerves that populate the tongue. Scientists created the image by superimposing a scanning electron microscope image onto a fluorescent image of the same tongue in which the nerves had been labeled with a red marker. This overlay allows scientist to determine whether the nerves successfully made it to their targets, the bumps on the tongue, called papillae, that house taste buds.
Credit:Liqun Ma,Grace F. Lopez,and
Robin F. Krimm, The Journal of Neuroscience, March 18, 2009, 29(11):3354-3364.
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