Muscle · Head

Tensor veli palatini

Musculus tensor veli palatini

A thin triangular muscle that pulls the soft palate taut rather than lifting it, and it does so through a right-angle turn. It descends from the base of the skull and the wall of the ear tube, narrows to a tendon, hooks around a small bony hook at the back of the palate like a rope around a pulley, then runs horizontally inward to spread into the palate's fibrous sheet. Tightening that sheet gives the lifting muscle something firm to raise. It is also the principal opener of the auditory tube — the reason a yawn or a hard swallow pops the ears — and it is the one palate muscle supplied by the trigeminal nerve rather than the vagus, because it develops with the chewing muscles.