Function
The action of the anterior and middle scalene muscles is to elevate the first rib and laterally flex (bend) the neck to the same side; the action of the posterior scalene is to elevate the second rib and tilt the neck to the same side.
They also act as accessory muscles of inspiration, along with the sternocleidomastoids.
Read more about this topic: Scalene Muscles
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”
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—Adam Phillips, British child psychoanalyst. “Worrying and Its Discontents,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, p. 58, Harvard University Press (1993)