The mammalian external ear houses extrinsic and intrinsic auricular muscles. There are three extrinsic auricular muscles-the posterior, superior, and anterior auricular muscles-and six intrinsic muscles-the helicis major and minor, tragicus, anti-tragicus, transverse and oblique muscles. These muscles have been considered vestigial in humans. However, numerous therapeutic and diagnostic wearable devices are designed to monitor and alleviate the symptoms of neurological disorders, brainstem injuries, emotional states, and auditory functions, by making use of the neural networks of the auricular muscles and their locations, which are easily accessible for ergonomic wearable biomedical devices. They can also serve as a bio-controller of human neuroprosthetics. The functionality of these auricular muscles remains elusive and requires further experimentation for a more in-depth understanding of their anatomy. The aims of this review are (1) to provide a detailed account of the neural networks of the extrinsic and intrinsic auricular muscles, (2) to describe diagnostic and therapeutic functions of these muscles as demonstrated in the current literature, and (3) to outline existing and potential neuroprosthetic applications making use of the auricular muscles and their neural networks.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 7. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 July 2023.
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#5,477,147
of 26,329,145 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Neurology
#4,255
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#108,835
of 457,406 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Neurology
#35
of 221 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,329,145 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 79th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 14,934 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.6. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 71% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 221 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 84% of its contemporaries.
