Facial Muscles and Ear Bones

In Girl in the Glass, when Declan makes a joke, it’s a bit too scholarly for his audience. The professor quips:

“The only muscles I plan on exercising tonight are my masseters and orbicularis oculi.” The first officer and captain stared blankly. “Sorry, I’ll dial back my humor. Those are the muscles involved with chewing food and closing my eyelids,” the professor said, this time eliciting forced chuckles.

The orbicularis oculi is a ring-like muscle surrounding the eye, crucial for closing the eyelids, voluntarily and involuntarily (blinking).

The masseter is the primary muscle in the face and jaw responsible for the action of chewing, also known as mastication.

Later in Girl in the Glass, when Declan hears a loud noise, he declares:

“My ossicles won’t be able to handle this noise for long.”

Declan is referring to the auditory ossicles, also called the middle ear bones. The ossicles consist of three tiny bones, the smallest in the human body: the malleus, incus, and stapes. The ossicles are vital for turning sound waves into auditory signals. When sound waves enter the ear, they cause the eardrum (tympanic membrane) to vibrate, and these vibrations are then transmitted through the ossicles in a chain reaction: from malleus, to incus, then stapes. The stapes, the smallest ossicle, then transmits the vibrations to the fluid-filled inner ear, where the signal reaches the cochlear (auditory) nerve.

Orbicularis oculi muscles open and close the eye

The masseter helps us chew

The ossicles help us hear