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Tongue Structure and Function

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Craniofacial Muscles

Abstract

The mammalian tongue is essential for normal respiration, swallowing, oral transport, emesis, coughing and, in humans, speech production. To achieve these behaviors, tongue musculature produces myriad changes in tongue shape and in concert with other head and neck structures a wide range of tongue movement speeds. Head and neck muscles are often described as having unconventional kinematic and mechanical demands. They may be required to apply prolonged, continuous force, as the activation of genioglossus to maintain airway patency, and they may be required to change force very rapidly, as the extraocular muscles during saccade. In this chapter, we describe the neuromuscular specialization that facilitates tongue behavior, and contrast this with typical limb function, in which the muscles undergo cyclical motion during relatively infrequent behaviors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Dissection, histological, and MRI investigations have produced detailed descriptions of tongue muscle organization in relatively few mammal species (primarily cat, dog, human, and rat). Primary descriptions in the human are those of Abd-El-Malek (1939) and Gaige et al. (2007) for the adult and Barnwell (1977 and related) for the fetal tongue. For organization of tongue musculature in non-mammals see Herrel et al. (2001) and Nishikawa et al. (1999).

  2. 2.

    Most tongue muscles have complex architecture the details of which may differ substantially between species (e.g., minimal lateral longitudinal muscle fibers in the anterior cat tongue, Hellstrand 1980). Cross-species differences in tongue muscle organization have not been studied in detail and can offer insights into neuromuscular bases of tongue movement.

Abbreviations

MyHC-emb:

MyHCembryonic

MyHCeom:

MyHCextraocular

MyHC-neo:

MyHCneonatal

MyHC-st:

MyHCslowtonic

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Acknowledgements

We thank Audrey Jernigan for illustrations. This work was supported by grant DC005017 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology, Emory University, 615 Michael Street, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Alan Sokoloff

  2. School of Applied Physiology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Thomas Burkholder

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  1. Alan Sokoloff
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  2. Thomas Burkholder
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Correspondence to Alan Sokoloff .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Ophthalmology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 55455, Minnesota, USA

    Linda K. McLoon

  2. Dept. Physiology, University of Kentucky, Leader Ave. 138, Lexington, 40506-9983, Kentucky, USA

    Francisco Andrade

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Sokoloff, A., Burkholder, T. (2012). Tongue Structure and Function. In: McLoon, L., Andrade, F. (eds) Craniofacial Muscles. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4466-4_12

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