Action
The palatine velum is slightly raised by the levator veli palatini and made tense by the tensor veli palatini; the palatopharyngeus muscles, by their contraction, pull the pharynx upward over the bolus of food and nearly come together, the uvula filling up the slight interval between them.
By these means the bolus is prevented from passing into the nasopharynx; at the same time, the palatopharyngeus muscles form an inclined plane, directed obliquely downward and backward, along the under surface of which the bolus descends into the lower part of the pharynx.
Read more about this topic: Palatopharyngeus Muscle
Famous quotes containing the word action:
“The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.”
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834)
“The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)