Buccinator muscle the cheek area, which aids in holding the cheek to the teeth during chewing. This action causes the muscle to keep food pushed back on the occlusal surface of the posterior teeth, as when a person chews. By keeping the food in the correct position when chewing, the buccinator assists the muscles of mastication. It aids whistling and smiling, and in neonates it is used to suckle. In the past the buccinator muscle was also written as bucinator muscle. A "bucinator" in classical Latin is a trumpeter, or more precisely, the person who blows the "bucina". The name "bucina" could
Reduced muscle mass, strength and performance in space with the microgravity environment. It is this knowledge base on which future operational countermeasures and investigations into the fundamental changes in muscle physiology will be based. The responses of the human body to microgravity exposure during spaceflight involve adaptations at numerous levels. It is believed that skeletal muscle adaptations to microgravity, which affect both muscle mass and function, involve structural alterations in the neural as well as the myofibrillar components of skeletal muscle. It is well accepted that the muscles involved in the maintenance of an upright position in terrestrial gravity (the antigravity muscles) are the most susceptible to spaceflight-induced