Taste Fibres and the Chorda Tympani

Abstract

Though current opinion accepts that the chorda tympani conducts the taste fibres from the anterior 2/3 af the tongue, many textbooks on neurology, anatomy and physiology (Wright, Brodal, Lundsgaard etc.) claim that these taste fibres must be able to follow other paths. This latter theory is supported by the fact that there are people who have kept their sense of taste after having been subjected to radical mastoidectomy, whereby the chorda tympani has been severed in the middle ear.