Background: Smoking is the cause of inducing changes in taste functionality under conditions of chronic exposure. The objective of this study was to evaluate taste sensitivity in young smokers and non-smokers and identify any differences in the shape, density and vascularisation of the fungiform papillae (fPap) of their tongue. Methods: Sixty-two male subjects who served in the Greek military f...

Gustatory papillae are complex organs that are composed of 1) an epithelium, 2) specialized sensory cells within the epithelium (the taste buds), 3) a broad connective core, and 4) sensory innervation. During papilla development, cells in the various tissue compartments must divide, aggregate, detach, migrate, and reaggregate in relation to each other, but factors that regulate such steps are p...

Schneiderian papillomas are benign neoplasms of the nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses arising from the surface epithelium which are also associated with malignant transformation. These neoplasms have three subtypes, namely fungiform, oncocytic, and inverted. Oncocytic Schneiderian papilloma is the rarest of the three morphological variants. It usually presents with unilateral intranasal polypo...

The goal of the Denver Papillae Protocol is to use a dichotomous key to define and prioritize the characteristics of fungiform papillae (FP) to ensure consistent scoring between scorers. This protocol builds off of a need that has arisen from the last two decades of taste research using FP as a proxy for taste pore density. FP density has historically been analyzed using Miller & Reedy's 1990 c...

Introduction Mouse taste buds in fungiform papillae consist of ∼50 cells (TBCs; unpublished data), but only a few of them have synaptic contacts with taste nerves (Kinnamon et al., 1993; Seta and Toyoshima, 1995). Neither chemical nor electrical synapses/gap junctions have been confirmed in mammalian taste buds, though a subpopulation of TBCs expressed a variety of neurotransmitter receptors (K...