Function
When tensed, the action of the muscle is to pull the malleus medially, tensing the tympanic membrane, damping vibration in the ear ossicles and thereby reducing the amplitude of sounds. This muscle is contracted primarily to dampen the noise produced by chewing. (Compare to the more general dampening function of the stapedius muscle.)
In many people with hyperacusis, an increased activity develops in the tensor tympani muscle in the middle ear as part of the startle response to some sounds. This lowered reflex threshold for tensor tympani contraction is activated by the perception/anticipation of loud sound, and is called tonic tensor tympani syndrome (TTTS). In some people with hyperacusis, the tensor tympani muscle can contract just by thinking about a loud sound. Following exposure to intolerable sounds, this contraction of the tensor tympani muscle tightens the ear drum, which can lead to the symptoms of ear pain/a fluttering sensation/a sensation of fullness in the ear (in the absence of any middle or inner ear pathology).
Read more about this topic: Tensor Tympani Muscle
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The function of the actor is to make the audience imagine for the moment that real things are happening to real people.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)