Structure
The stylopharyngeus is a long, slender muscle, cylindrical above, flattened below. It arises from the medial side of the base of the styloid process, passes downward along the side of the pharynx between the superior pharyngeal constrictor and the middle pharyngeal constrictor, and spreads out beneath the mucous membrane.
Some of its fibers are lost in the constrictor muscles while others, joining the palatopharyngeus muscle, are inserted into the posterior border of the thyroid cartilage.
The glossopharyngeal nerve runs on the lateral side of this muscle, and crosses over it to reach the tongue.
Read more about this topic: Stylopharyngeus Muscle
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
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—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)
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“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
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