Hello and welcome! In this video, I’ll teach you some of my tips and tricks for remembering all of the skeletal muscles of the head and face that you’d see in an anatomy class. And to make this lesson more manageable for beginners, I’ll present the list in smaller chunks of 4-8 muscles.
You can find a list of the sections and timestamps in the description below. And with that out of the way, let’s get into the muscles. [intro crack — Sponsored by Kenhub] Now, to remember all of these muscles we’re going to take advantage of one fact: anatomists are really boring when it comes to naming things.
They’ll usually take things like the region, position, or shape of the muscle and combine it with a Latin root. Forehead / eyelid (5) And our first chunk of muscles, the forehead, has some great examples. The Latin root for forehead is frontal, and this big wide muscle on the front of your forehead, is named the frontalis which raises your eyebrows and helps with facial expressions.
In a similarly predictable naming pattern, the occipitalis covers the back part of your skull, the occipital region. But a small caveat, some anatomists actually classify the frontalis and occipitalis into one continuous occipitofrontalis muscle since they share a big band of connective tissue called the Galea aponeurotica and don’t insert on any bony landmark. Either way, if you remember your regional terms then the muscles fall into place.
Now, some muscles get their names from their shape as well as their location. Like that frontalis muscle actually inserts on another muscle, the orbicularis oculi muscle, which I remember because it circles, or orbits the eye, and allows you to close your eyelids. It’s one of those muscle names that has both the shape and location in its name, making it predictable to identify.
Meanwhile, the next two muscles are named after their action. The corrugator supercilii and the depressor supercilii both have actions in their names, but you’ll notice that the last part, supercilli refers to the a piece of anatomy — in this case the superciliary arch, the bony bump that you can feel behind your eyebrows. So these muscles move your eyebrows somehow.
I remember these because the corrugator sits high and medially, which lets you furrow your eyebrows and make an angry face, and I don’t know about you, but Corrugator sounds like a very angry super villain. And if the Corrugator were real, they’d probably be angry all the time and keep that furrowed brow. Meanwhile, the depressor supercilii is smaller and tucked within the orbicularis oculi muscle.
Some anatomists just consider it part of the orbicularis oris while others consider it a separate muscle, but regardless, it attaches to the superciliary arch, which helps us remember it. Extraocular (8) The next chunk is made of the muscles that move the eye, or the extraocular muscles. And while there are 8 names here, we can actually chunk them up even further.
Four of them are rectus muscles — and when we see rectus in muscle names, think of muscles that pull in a straight line like rectus abdominis, rectus femoris, or the rectus oculi muscles in the eye. These things point the eye in one of four directions. So the superior rectus oculi points the eye up, the inferior rectus oculi points down, and medial and lateral rectus point it left and right.
So to remember these, find these straight muscles that attach to the eye and substitute some directional terms. The two oblique muscles of the eye follow a similar pattern. In the language of anatomy, oblique just means slanted, neither parallel nor perpendicular.
And both the obliquus oculi superior and obliquus oculi inferior use pulleys made of connective tissue to attach to the eye at slanted angles. That’s it for muscles that move the eye, but there are some that move the eye/lid/ which includes another example of boring naming conventions: the levator palpebrae superioris. It’s a mouthful, but each word gives us a clue to its function.
It’s a levator, so we know it lifts, we know superior means up, closer to the top of the head, and you guessed it, palpebrae means eyelid. If that doesn’t resonate with your memory, I also blink my eyes along with the rhythm of the word, which gives me a little kinetic touchstone for the name. Finally, you might also see the superior tarsal muscle described with the extraoculares.
It hooks up to the base of the levator palpebrae to raise the upper eyelid. Once again, we’ve got that directional term, superior, but we’ve also got tarsal, which you probably know as foot. And in this case, you have to think of it like the foot of the eyelid.
Ear (6) Next up are the ear muscles, some of which are actually remnants of evolution — very few people can voluntarily flex these muscles and move their ears. On the side of our skulls attached to the outer ear are the auricularis muscles, and there are three of them: auricularis anterior, auricularis superior, and auricularis posterior. They’re straightforward to remember: literally directional terms plus auricle, which is the regional term for ear.
But once we go into the ear, we find two more muscles, including the smallest muscle in your body, the stapedius, named because it stabilizes one of those small ear bones, the stapes. You’ll also find the tensor tympani here which attaches the auditory tube to the malleus, another one of those tiny ear bones. And despite its name, it doesn’t directly /attach/ to the tympanic membrane, or eardrum, but it does protect the eardrum by pulling on the malleus, which then puts /tension/ on the /tympanic/ membrane, and protects it from loud noises.
That’s my memory device for this one. The final muscle in this chunk is the temporoparietalis. As the name implies, it sits somewhere between the temporal and parietal regions of the skull and attaches to the ear.
The harder part is telling this muscle apart from the auricularis muscles. When we look at all of the muscles together, the temporoparietalis kind of looks like one of them. I think of it like this: the auricularis muscles all have single directional terms — superior, anterior, and posterior, and they look like the cardinal directions on a compass, west, north, east.
But on this auricularis compass, there aren’t any combination directions like superoanterior. There’s no /north/west. The temporoparietalis inserts between the superior and anterior auricularis muscles where the northwest point on the compass would be.
Since it’s a combination direction and has a combination name, I know that this is the temporoparietalis and these are the auricularis muscles. The other trouble spot is telling between this and the temporalis muscle. The big giveaway is the size — the temporalis is much bigger than the ear muscles and inserts on the jaw, not the ear.
Nose (5) Next up, the nose muscles. You probably saw this one coming, but they mostly share one latin root: nasal. The most prominent are the two muscles that control the nostrils — the transverse nasalis and alar nasalis.
The transverse portion spans the entire width of the nose, transversing from edge to edge. Meanwhile, I’m using my Latin roots and know that alar means wings, and the alar nasalis is tucked away on the edges of the nose, like little wings. And as far as function, there are really only two things we can do to our nostrils: dilate them or compress them.
The alar nasalis dilates while the transverse compresses. You can use the acronym DACT if you’d like: dilation alar, compression transverse. But as far as location, both nasalis muscles have it built in.
On top of the nasalis muscles is the long procerus muscle, another Latin giveaway since it means tall or extended. You could also remember it because it reminds you of the proboscis monkey with the big nose. Whatever you like.
It’s sometimes called the pyramidalis nasi, which is easy enough — the pyramid shaped muscle on your nose. Moving down the face, you’ll find the depressor septi nasi, which has the memory device built into the name. It depresses, or pulls down, the septum of the nose.
So you’ll find this one centered under the nose. Finally the muscle with the longest name of any muscle in the body: the Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi, or LLSAN. But despite how long it is, it’s another literal translation.
It lifts the upper lip, the labii superioris, and the wings of the nose, or alaeque nasi. It runs from the zygomatic arch al the way down to your upper lip, so it spans a lot of anatomy. Mouth (9) The next chunk is the biggest of the facial region, the mouth muscles.
Our mouths are super expressive, so we have a bunch of tiny muscles that tweak it in a bunch of different ways. The most superficial muscles are these long boys, the Zygomaticus major and minor. They both originate at the zygomatic arch, or upper cheek and head to the mouth which is how I remember these muscles.
But these are the first major and minor pair we’ve seen in the series so far. Those terms just correspond to size. The zygomaticus major is bigger than the zygomaticus minor.
Some of the other muscles go back to intuitive action, region, and direction naming convention. Like the Levator labii superioris — it lifts the upper lip. Meanwhile the depressor labii inferioris pulls the bottom lip down.
These two muscles have kind of broad, general-lip-area insertions. On the other hand, the Levator Anguli Oris and Depressor anguli oris attach at the angle, or corners of the mouth. Again, the name tells you everything — the levator lifts the angle of your mouth, while the depressor pulls it down.
Although some anatomists have different names for them. The depressor anguli oris is sometimes called the triangularis because it’s triangle shaped. .
. I guess, and the levator is called the caninus because it’s where those big canine teeth would be. The mentalis muscles are a pair of muscles front and center on the chin.
I remember this one by imagining an old and wisened mentor figure stroking his trim goatee as he teaches me anatomy. Then my favorite muscle name to say, the Buccinator, which is the main muscle of each cheek. It connects everything from the maxilla, the mandible, and the mouth together.
So it’s less of a chewing or biting muscle, and more of a cheek muscle, allowing us to push air out of our mouth when it’s filled up. In fact, some people have nicknamed it the trumpet muscle because of that function. So you can always remember bugle and buccinator.
Around the mouth is the Orbicularis oris which has the same naming structure as the orbicularis oculi. Orbicularis means that a muscle encircles, or orbits, an entire structure. And oris means oral — so the orbicularis oris is the muscle that encircles the mouth.
Then there’s the Risorius, this muscle that goes from the corner of your mouth to somewhere in the general vicinity of the zygomatic area. The bulk of the muscle belly comes off the corner of your mouth, but where it goes after that is different from person to person. The only way I remember this one is because it looks like the Joker’s scars from The Dark Knight, and laughter in Spanish and French both start with ri- just like /ri/sorious, so this is the Joker muscle.
Also, if you’re too young to get that reference, finish this video then watch that movie, it’s incredible. Chewing (4) Next up are the muscles of mastication, or chewing. There aren’t a ton of muscles here, but they have some interesting names, so I wanted to keep it simple.
The first is the Masseter, and knowing that mastication means chewing, the masseter literally translates to the chewing muscle. And it’s exactly where you think it would be, on your cheek connecting the skull to the jaw. If you bite down, you can feel this one pop up big time.
Likewise, you can feel another one of those chewing muscles, the temporalis, over your temple. The other two chewing muscles are smaller and deep to the masseter. They’re the lateral pterygoid and medial pterygoid.
The medial version is actually behind the jaw and skull and is more visible from the inside, whereas the lateral pterygoid is a small muscle that’s more superficial and sits right between the skull and jaw. I remember these because /pterygoid/ sounds like you ate something and you’re saying its “very good”. Also, if you’re wondering why we don’t just call this one the superficial pterygoid and this one the deep pterygoid, you’re not alone.
The reason they’re medial and lateral is because of those muscles have superficial and deep heads with separate origins. So to avoid saying something confusing like superficial superficial pterygoid, they were named the medial and lateral pterygoids. Tongue (9) Moving on to the last chunk in the head unit: the tongue.
And the tongue muscles can be further divided into the four /intrinsic/ muscles that change the shape of the tongue, and a bunch of /extrinsic/ muscles to move the tongue within the mouth. You’ll notice a pattern with the names for the Extrinsic muscles. They all end in glossus which is the Latin root for tongue.
Then the prefix gives you the hint of where else it attaches. Clear example: the Styloglossus is a long muscle that connects the styloid process on the skull to the tongue. Or the palatoglossus which attaches the soft palate to the tongue.
Told ya, there’s a clear pattern with these. And the Hyoglossus is this wide muscle that attaches the tongue to the Hyoid bone. Some anatomists say that a portion of the this muscle is an entirely separate muscle called the chondroglossus, a muscle that attaches to the same spots as the hyoglossus but is separated by fibers from another muscle.
But if it’s not on your list of muscles to memorize for class, don’t worry. The final extrinsic tongue muscle is the Genioglossus — this wide, fanning muscle behind your bottom front teeth responsible for sticking out your tongue. I remember this one because genial, or nice, people don’t usually stick out their tongue when they smile.
The intrinsic muscles follow a different pattern. They’re named after the direction that their fibers take instead of where they attach. So the verticalis are the vertical fibers of the tongue, up and down while the transversus are the fibers that run side to side.
And of course, the tongue is a long organ, so it has a set of longitudinal fibers that run front to back. The superior longitudinal muscle is the most superior, or topmost, fibers of the tongue. All of the mucosa, taste buds, and nerve endings are on top of that.
Then the inferior longitudinal muscle is underneath that. If you want to see the next video in the muscle memorization series, check out this playlist here. Otherwise, subscribe, leave a like on the video.
Have fun, be good, thanks for watching.
