Craniofacial Muscles

Chapter 12
Tongue Structure and Function
Alan Sokoloff and Thomas Burkholder
Abbreviations
MyHC-emb
MyHCeom
MyHC-neo
MyHC-st
MyHCembryonic
MyHCextraocular
MyHCneonatal
MyHCslowtonic
12.1 Introduction: The Tongue in Neuromuscular Context
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
saccades. 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.
A. Sokoloff (*)
Department of Physiology , Emory University ,
615 Michael Street , Atlanta , GA 30322 , USA
e-mail: Sokoloff@physio.emory.edu
T. Burkholder
School of Applied Physiology , Georgia Institute of Technology ,
Atlanta , GA , USA
L.K. McLoon and F.H. Andrade (eds.), Craniofacial Muscles: A New Framework
for Understanding the Effector Side of Craniofacial Muscle Control,
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-4466-4_12, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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