The tongue isn’t a single muscle—it’s a muscular hydrostat. Essentially, muscular hydrostat a strong, flexible biological structure that contains a whole bunch of muscle fibers but no skeletal structure.

Anyway, because our tongues can bend, elongate, shorten, and twist so freely, they’re great for helping us swallow food and for producing an impressive inventory of unique speech sounds. They’re also the key to our sense of gustation (that is, taste). Read about the Human tongue – Description, Anatomy and function by Pritish Kumar to enhance your knowledge.

The Structure of the Tongue

The root of the tongue is connected to the hyoid bone via the hyoglossus and genioglossus muscles as well as the hyoglossal membrane. The body of the tongue contains both extrinsic and intrinsic muscles (more on those in a second). The apex of the tongue is the bit at the end that makes contact with the teeth. Linguists studying articulation often discriminate between the apex and the blade of the tongue—essentially, while the apex is the very tip of the tongue, the blade of the tongue is the teeth-facing region just before the apex.

Human toung anatomy

If we look at the underside of the tongue, we can see the frenulum, a little web-like fold of tissue that restricts the movement of the tongue. Near where the frenulum meets the root of the tongue, we can also see the submandibular/submaxillary salivary ducts.

Those little things sticking up out of tongue are not your tastebuds: they’re most likely papillae. The dorsal and lateral surfaces of the tongue are home to a bunch of these small projections, and there are a few different varieties of them.

The vallate papillae, which sit in a row on the dorsum of the tongue, contain lots of tastebuds (100–300 per papilla).

Fungiform papillae, which contain about 5 tastebuds each, are found protruding mostly from the sides and apex of the tongue. They’re large (in the relative sense) and mushroom-shaped, thus the name “fungiform.”

Foliate papillae are located in small grooves on the sides of the tongue. Though foliate papillae don’t contain tastebuds themselves, the mucous membrane that covers them does have a few tastebuds on its surface.

Lastly, filiform papillae can be found all over the tongue. They don’t contain any tastebuds, but they do have touch receptors.

Intrinsic Muscles

The four paired intrinsic tongue muscles allow the tongue to change shape.

The superior longitudinal muscles run along the tongue just below the superior surface’s mucosa. These muscles shorten the tongue and dorsiflex its tip.

The inferior longitudinal muscles are basically the inferior surface equivalent of the SL muscle. That is, it sits just above the mucosa of the inferior surface of the tongue. The IL muscle shortens and provides ventroflexion to the tongue. In addition, it allows for the retroflexion of the base of the tongue.

The transverse muscles run laterally across the tongue, connecting the medial septum and the lateral aspect of the tongue. These muscles help narrow the tongue. The vertical muscles connect the inferior and superior surfaces of the tongue. Their action is to flatten the tongue.

Extrinsic Muscles

The extrinsic tongue muscles are vital to the process of swallowing and help the tongue to move around in the mouth. All of these muscles originate outside the tongue and insert into it at various points.

Muscle Origin Insertion Action
Palatoglossus Anterior surface of soft palate Lateral border of tongue Initiation of swallowing
Styloglossus Anterior lateral styloid process of temporal bone Lateral border of tongue Pulls the sides of the tongue up and pulls tongue back (this creates a trough for swallowing)
Hyoglossus Greater cornu of hyoid bone Side of tongue Depresses the tongue
Genioglossus Inferior mental spine (process) of mandible Tongue and hyoid Depresses and extends the tongue
Geniohyoid Inferior mental spine (process) of mandible Anterior body of hyoid Elevates hyoid, depresses mandible

 

Speech and Swallowing

Speech

When we produce speech, the tongue serves as a versatile articulator. Many consonant sounds are produced by a particular part of the tongue obstructing the flow of air coming up from the trachea at a particular place in a particular manner.

The tongue is important for vowel production, too. The position of the tongue in the mouth determines a vowel’s height (high, mid, low) and whether it is a front, central, or back vowel. For example, a high front vowel would be the “ee” in “free” and a low back vowel would be the “ah” in “spa.” The tongue also determines whether a vowel is tense or lax.

Swallowing

The tongue pushes food around in the mouth while you break it up with your teeth and it pushes chewed food (now called a bolus) toward the oropharynx. The filiform papillae on the tongue make this easier by helping to increase friction between the tongue and the food.

Swallowing has an oral, pharyngeal, and esophageal stage. Scientists break down the oral phase of swallowing liquid into two stages.

Let’s say you’re drinking a glass of water. In the oral preparatory stage, you take a sip of water and your tongue forms a seal against your soft palate, holding the water in the front of your oral cavity. Then, during the oral propulsive stage, the tip of the tongue comes up to the alveolar ridge and the tongue-velum seal is broken. The tongue continues pressing up against the top of the mouth from front to back, pushing the water towards the pharynx and initiating the pharyngeal stage of swallowing.

Now let’s say you’re having a snack with your glass of water. You bite into it and then, in the stage 1 transport phase of the Process Model, the tongue pushes the piece of apple towards your back teeth so you can chew it.

Food processing begins and the movements of mastication (chewing) and secretions from your salivary glands begin the physical and chemical digestion process, forming a bolus you can swallow. As you chew, your tongue moves in cyclical motions to help keep the food in the right place.

Stage 2 transport works similarly to the oral propulsive stage: the tongue presses against the top of the mouth from back to front, moving the bolus to the back of the mouth. After that, it’s the pharynx’s turn to take over.

Taste

As  mentioned earlier, many of the papillae on the tongue’s surface contain tastebuds. Tastebuds aren’t exclusive to the tongue, though—they can be found elsewhere in the mouth and upper throat. Each tastebud contains an opening called a pore, where food dissolved in saliva can enter. It also contains specialized epithelial cells that respond to chemicals in food called tastants. Little hairs at the ends of these cells provide sites for tastant molecules to bind to receptors, which triggers an action potential.

Our tastebuds can detect whether something is sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or umami (savory), but we can thank our noses for the array of complex flavors we know and love. When we “taste” a flavor, olfaction is really doing about 80% of the work.  When you’re tasting, you’re usually smelling as well. Odorants rise off the food in your mouth while you’re chewing on it. These odorants travel through the retronasal pathway and they get picked up by the receptor cells of your olfactory epithelium.

Reference

https://www.visiblebody.com/blog/anatomy-and-physiology-the-terrific-tongue