How tongues stick out
Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.
“Muscular hydrostats” are cool. 😎 Tongues, elephant trunks, and octopus/squid tentacles are the classic muscular hydrostats. Basically, you can change the shape of a “water balloon” by squeezing it — and a tube full of muscles is like a water balloon that can squeeze itself into different shapes. Kooky. Strange that I’ve spent 23 years regularly thinking about muscle tissue and didn’t know how tongues stick out, or how an elephant trunk works. Oh well — better late than never, I guess!