Linda K. McLoon • Francisco H. Andrade
Editors
2013
The craniofacial muscles are small skeletal muscles associated with head and neck structures and involved in a wide array of non-locomotor activities such as mastication, swallowing, breathing, vocalization, facial expression, and even vision and other special senses. These muscles are the new kids on the block, starting with their relatively recent appearance with the evolution of the head and neck in vertebrates and to our growing understanding of their distinctive development programs, functions, and pathologies. For convenience, we can group the craniofacial muscles according to their developmental origin: extraocular muscles, branchiomeric muscles (facial, masticatory, pharyngeal, and laryngeal muscles), and tongue muscles (Noden and Francis-West 2006 ) .