Muscle · Neck

Middle pharyngeal constrictor

Musculus constrictor pharyngis medius

A fan-shaped sheet arising from the horns of the hyoid bone and the ligament that runs to the styloid process, spreading backwards to meet its partner at the midline seam of the throat. Its fibres open out as they go — the lowest running steeply down, the highest almost straight up — so the muscle covers a tall span of the pharyngeal wall from a narrow origin. It is overlapped from below by the inferior constrictor and overlaps the superior constrictor in turn, and this shingled arrangement is what lets the three sheets contract in sequence from top to bottom and strip a swallowed bolus downwards. It squeezes a tube rather than moving a bone, so no joint action applies.