Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2018 Jul 2;8:9975. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-28195-2

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2018

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Summary of oral mechanoreceptor anatomy. Schematic of presumptive somatosensory innervation of the lingual and palatal mucosa. Myelinated afferents are shown in blue and marked by βIII tubulin and NFH; these endings are generally FM1-43+ and expected to be Piezo2+. Unmyelinated afferents are shown in pink and marked by expression of βIII tubulin and Peripherin, these are largely FM1-43- and Piezo2-. The lingual mucosa is innervated by two presumptive mechanosensory end organs. End bulbs of Krause are found in filiform papillae, while a neuronal collar surrounds taste buds in filiform papillae. In addition to these, unmyelinated afferents extend into the filiform papillae and surround taste buds. The hard palate is innervated by glomerular endings and corpuscular endings. These end organs are morphologically distinguished by the relatively disorganized appearance of glomerular endings. The hard palate rugae and post-rugal field are also densely lined with Merkel cell-neurite complexes. Finally, unmyelinated afferents are interspersed throughout the palatal epithelium. Cartoon was drawn with color schemes and symbols modeled after Fig. 1 of Bautista & Lumpkin⁵⁴.