We have about ten thousand taste receptors, but we actually have more pain and other somatosensory receptors than taste receptors in our mouths. Because they exist side by side on the tongue, we sometimes mix them up. When you describe a chili as hot, you are being more literal than you might suppose. Your brain interprets it as being actually burned. As Joshua Tewksbury of the University of Colorado has put it, “Chilies innervate the same neurons that you activate when you touch a 335-degree burner. Essentially, our brain is telling us that we have got our tongue on the stove.” In the same
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