Facial muscle

“ Tense jaw muscles, whether large or small, denote the characteristic of persistence. But loose, flabby cheek muscles do not necessarily prove the habit of over-eating, or of sensuality. They may mean that the man who has them does not habitually allow his feelings to show in his face. When the muscles of facial expression are flabby they prove only that they are slightly used. Therefore when you encounter a man with loose cheeks read his characteristics from other muscle-structure signs, and from his actions. ”

“ It is not entirely due to the concealing of the body that the facial muscles have become known as the muscles of expression. Failures of tonicity in these muscles are conspicuous; the sagging eyelids or corners of the mouth, or cheek muscles and other modifications which are readily observed but described with difficulty, are common traits which are fatal to beauty. ”

“ Why, when greatly delighted, or impressed with certain unexpected contrasts of ideas, should there be a contraction of particular facial muscles, and particular muscles of the chest and abdomen? Such answer to this question as may be possible can be rendered only by physiology.
Every child has made the attempt to hold the foot still while it is tickled, and has failed; and probably there is scarcely any one who has not vainly tried to avoid winking, when a hand has been suddenly passed before the eyes. ”

“ The development of the facial muscles is proportioned to the need of seizing prey and crushing the food. In frogs, fish, reptiles, birds, that swallow their food whole, one may say that the face is wanting; they have no expression except in the eye. In birds, the functions of the facial nerve are restricted to a little filament distributed to the cutaneous muscles of the neck, which produces that ruffling of the feathers and erection of the crest which is the characteristic expression of their feelings. ”

“ The value of the study of the nerve-muscular conditions of the face is finely illustrated in the case of the passive, expressionless face which may be woke up, "lighted up," made to express the whole soul in the face simply by conditions of the tension of the facial muscles resulting from the mental state. Thus, often, great and pleasing beauty is seen in faces unattractive when at rest. Conversely, some faces are beautiful in their passive condition, but lack expression and interest when in action from mental work; women having such faces talk but little. ”

“ Usually there is pallor of the face which may be followed quickly with a twitching of the facial muscles, and sometimes those of the hands and feet. In most cases the attack comes on without warning; the eyes become fixed and rolled backward; the twitching usually begins in the face and very soon the entire body is involved. ”

“ Among the facial muscles, intellectuality appears to be most commonly expressed in the frontal and middle zones, and by the action of the corrugator and orbicularis-oculi muscles. It has been possible among out-patients to accept the facial appearance as a physical sign of mental as well as of physical and organic suffering. ”

“ Not only must the lips and nose be trained, but the muscles of the face also. These muscles are capable, if educated, of doing important service.
The artist on the operatic stage or the speaker on the platform, without facial expression begotten of muscular activity, may lessen by half his power over an audience. To train the facial muscles is a complicated task. ”

“ Some races and persons have a marked development of the lower face with prominent jaws and strong facial muscles. These people like hard foods, enjoy chewing their food, and, if possible, keep something in their mouth, gum or tobacco or the like, to exercise their jaws. ”

“ The incessant flow of involuntary nerve-currents to the facial muscles doubtless accounts for the odd similarity of expression among men of the same vocation. In many such cases the conditions are so complex that it seems impossible to lay one's finger upon the special items of environment which conduce to the facial characteristics exhibited by nearly all members of certain trades and professions. ”

“ If from the natural state we pass to the morbid, we see the muscular extensibility manifested in a much more evident degree. In the face, the air accumulated in the mouth, swells it by elongating the buccinators; the various tumours of this cavity, as the fungous and sarcomatous ones, often distend the small facial muscles in a manner which would astonish us, if we considered the naturally352 small extent of these muscles which are trebled and even quadrupled. ”

“ It is a chronic affection, usually beginning in early life, increasing slowly for years, and then becoming stationary. It is distinguished from one-sided muscular atrophy by the electric reaction, which is not lost in the facial muscles in facial hemiatrophy, and there is no atrophy of other muscles of the body. ”

“ So, when the muscular sheet, which, as I have said, is closely attached to the skin of the chest and more loosely to that of the neck, contracts and becomes shortened between its origin on the chest to its insertion in the face and jaw, it gives a most obvious pull on the skin over it and wrinkles it vertically in a manner which will strike any thin person who contracts it voluntarily before a looking-glass. The connec­tion shown between the action of the platysma muscle and the change of hair is so close that it can hardly be questioned that one is the cause of the other. ”

“ These muscles, when thus in conjoint yet opposed action, may be called, for the sake of brevity, the grief-muscles. When a person elevates his eyebrows by the contraction of the whole frontal muscle, transverse wrinkles extend across the whole breadth of the forehead; but in the present case the middle fasciae alone are contracted; consequently, transverse furrows are formed across the middle part alone of the forehead. The skin over the exterior parts of both eyebrows is at the same time drawn downwards and smooth, by the contraction of the outer portions of the orbicular muscles. ”

“ Both apes and man have muscles on each side which raise or lower the angles of the mouth, draw the angles upwards and outwards, and raise the upper and depress the lower lip; and, though the muscle of the mouth which corresponds to the orbicularis of the eye is not a continuous structure, but formed of interrupted bundles of fibres, it is powerful in closing the lips and active in the expressions. There are also in man scattered oblique fibres in the substance of the lower lip, well-developed and closely-set in a sucking child, and these in the adult are scattered and less conspicuous. ”

“ One evening—we did this work at night—we were to dissect and expose all the muscles of the head, so as to make them look as nearly as possible like the colored plates in the anatomy. We were expected to learn the names of all these structures. The memorizing of these terms was no small task, for I remember that one little muscle even bore this outlandish name: levator labii superioris [Pg 103] alaquae nasi. Anglicized, this would mean that the function of the muscle was to raise the upper lip and dilate the nostril. ”

“ The prominence, which also exists in the ox, is a fibro-muscular pad which blends with the orbicular muscle of the lips, and receives on its superior aspect the insertion of the two muscles (levator menti) by which it is suspended. These arise, above, on each side of the symphysis of the inferior maxillary bone. They raise the lower lip with force, and they are the agents which, as we can sometimes observe in the horse, make it click against the upper lip, suddenly projecting it upwards. ”

“ The neck is bent, the head hangs ('bowed down' with grief) , the relaxation of the cheek- and jaw-muscles makes the face look long and narrow, the jaw may even hang open. The eyes appear large, as is always the case where the orbicularis muscle is paralyzed, but they may often be partly covered by the upper lid which droops in consequence of the laming of its own levator. ”

“ It is wonderful to see this mechanism under the microscope, how every hair has its own gland, its own muscle and its own nerve, its own arteries and veins. When these muscles contract, the meshes of the skin contract likewise and express the contents of the glands. We do not notice these movements of the skin, because the muscles contract very slowly.
Sometimes special muscles appear in the skin called cutaneous muscles, which play an important part in the life of animals.
We all know how the hedgehog rolls himself into a ball on the approach of danger. ”

“ The facial cellular texture contributes to the beauty and harmony of the countenance, the features of which, examined closely, show that the muscles draw in an unpleasant manner across the skin, when there is no fat, and consequently that there is too great a depression. In107 an opposite state, there is a kind of bloating that is disagreeable; a middle state is the most favourable to the beauty of the face. This texture is almost wholly disconnected with expression, which is effected by the muscles. ”

“ Moreover, there is attached to the cheek-bones a powerful muscle which connects it with the lower jaw, and by its contraction brings the two jaws together; and this is a second way in which violent exercise of the jaws tends to enlarge the cheek-bones, for all bones become enlarged if the muscles attached to them are much exercised. ”

“ Abstract The morphology and arrangement of the jaw adductor muscles in vertebrates reflects masticatory style and feeding processes, diet and ecology. However, gross muscle anatomy is rarely preserved in fossils and is, therefore, heavily dependent on reconstructions. ”

“ There is a little tell-tale muscle in the inner corner of the eye, which, if you question it, will deliver a report into your looking-glass touching the state of the whole muscular system which lies elsewhere hidden in your body. When it is pale, it praises you. Muscular development is, by all means, to be kept down. ”

“ The muscles 7, 8, 9, elevate the angle of the mouth. The muscle 10 brings the teeth together when eating. The muscle 11 depresses the upper lip. The muscle 13 closes the mouth. The muscle 15 depresses the angle of the mouth. The muscle 16 draws down the lower lip. The muscles 18, 19, 20, 23, depress the lower jaw and larynx and elevate the sternum. The muscle 21, when both sides contract, draws the head forward, or elevates the sternum; when only one contracts, the face is turned one side toward the opposite shoulder. The muscles 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, aid in respiration. ”

“ The other two are called oblique muscles, one of which, with its long tendon passing through a cartilaginous loop, acts upon the principle of the fixed pulley, and turns the eye in a direction contrary to its own action. When the external muscle becomes too short, the eye turns out; but if the internal muscle is unduly contracted, the eye turns inward, toward the nose. One eye is sometimes turned up or down, but this is of less frequent occurrence. ”

“ Gushing by a purposeful division of the facial nerve and its anastomosis with the spino-facial, has more recently succeeded in restoring to the patient a considerable degree of normal emotional control of the expressive muscles of the face. I leave to expert physiologists to conjecture what new adjustments in their related forms of functioning this required from the cerebral hemispheres. ”

“ We should expect the convex cast of one side of the face to fit, line for line, into the concave cast of the other; but it is doubtful if there is to be anywhere found one single head of this ideal perfection. Neither the contour of the cheeks, nor the lines of the countenance, are the same on both sides, and they are all the less so because every one unconsciously tends to perform many unilateral facial movements, which in time cause a divergence between the two sides of the face. ”

“ We can hardly suppose that disuse would maintain or develop the projecting chin, increase its perpendicular height till the jaw is deepest and strongest at its extremity, evolve a side flange, and enlarge [10] the upper jaw-bone to form part of a more prominent nose, while drawing back the savagely obtrusive teeth and lips to a more pleasing and subdued position of retirement and of humanized beauty. ”

“ In viewing a regular curve, no muscle of the eyeball acts continuously and uniformly, but enjoys partial relief by remissions, or total relief by intermissions of its action; and the regularity of these remissions and intermissions, as well as the equal distribution of exercise, is promoted by the regularity of the curve. Acting in succession, the muscles afford mutual relief after actions of such short duration and variable intensity, as to afford positive pleasure; and in this muscular pleasure of the eye consists the beauty of configuration. ”

“ The muscles which move the lower jaw are affected more early, and more obstinately than any of the other external muscles of the body, only because they are more constantly in a relaxed, or idle state. ”

“ Asymmetry is, however, seen in facial palsy, in sneering, and occasionally in the one-sided grimaces of very nervous people. Certain commonly marked lines in the face—horizontal and vertical lines in the frontal zone, the naso-labial grooves, the lines of the upper and lower lips, and the positions of the angles of the mouth—exist as the result of the puckerings produced by muscular action. ”

“ This tiny structure is endowed with the quality of contracting in response to certain stimuli falling on the skin, so that it causes the hair to which it is attached to stand erect instead of sloping, and incidentally squeezes some of the secretion out of the sebaceous gland which lies in each angle. The human skin thus possesses about a third of a million minute muscular bands and shows no sign of parting with this old gift from a lower hairy stock, and whatever value, if any, their function be to their possessor they show a remarkable readiness to perform it efficiently. ”