Muscle · Head

Styloglossus

Musculus styloglossus

The smallest of the four muscles that enter the tongue from outside it, and the shortest of the three that hang from the styloid process. It runs from a thin spike of bone that projects downward from the skull just in front of the ear, forward and downward to the side of the tongue, where its fibres split — one set running along the length of the tongue toward the tip, the other interlacing with the muscle coming up from the hyoid bone. Its pull draws the tongue up and back, which is the movement that shifts a mouthful of food toward the throat at the start of a swallow.