Tongue anatomy
A muscular organ for taste, chewing, swallowing and speech.
About
A muscular organ in the floor of the mouth covered with taste buds.
Function. Moves food, shapes speech and senses taste; the genioglossus keeps it from falling back in sleep.
Clinical note. Oral cancers commonly arise on the side of the tongue.
Structures in the atlas 1
The modelled pieces that make up the tongue in the 3D atlas. Each opens in the explorer.
The digestive in brief
The digestive tract is a nine-metre tube from mouth to anus. Food is chewed, swallowed down the oesophagus, churned with acid in the stomach, digested and absorbed along the small intestine (duodenum, jejunum, ileum), and its residue concentrated in the colon. The liver, gallbladder and pancreas pour bile and enzymes into the duodenum. The model includes the tongue, salivary glands and gums, the stomach and intestines in many segments, the liver as eight hepatovenous segments with its bile ducts, the gallbladder, the pancreas and the mesenteries that suspend the gut.