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Soft palate: anatomy, location and function

The soft palate is the muscular back part of the roof of the mouth. Its free back edge carries the uvula. During swallowing it rises to close the opening between the mouth and nasopharynx, keeping food out of the nose.

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Structures

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Highlighted in the model: Soft palate. Click any part to read about it, or switch off “Highlight topic” to see the whole body. Use Male / Female to switch bodies. 3D data: BodyParts3D, © The Database Center for Life Science; knee ligaments, menisci, tonsils, palate and parotid glands from the Human Reference Atlas Visible Human Male model and female parts from its Visible Human Female model (HuBMAP / NIH); lung lobes built from the BodyParts3D chest; all CC BY 4.0; meshes simplified and recoloured. The default body is an adult male.

Soft palate at a glance

Also called
Velum
What it is
The soft palate is the muscular back part of the roof of the mouth. Its free back edge carries the uvula.
Location
It hangs from the back edge of the hard palate, to which it is joined by the palatine aponeurosis. It forms the roof of the fauces; the palatoglossal and palatopharyngeal arches run down from it on each side, around the palatine tonsils.
Function
During swallowing it rises to close the opening between the mouth and nasopharynx, keeping food out of the nose.
Body system
Digestive · single, midline structure
FMA ID
FMA55021 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)

Key facts

  • Five muscles move it: tensor veli palatini, levator veli palatini, palatoglossus, palatopharyngeus and musculus uvulae.
  • All are supplied by the pharyngeal branch of the vagus nerve except tensor veli palatini, which is supplied by a branch of the mandibular nerve (CN V3).
  • Its sensory supply is from the lesser palatine nerves.

Structures next to the soft palate

The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:

References

  1. Foundational Model of Anatomy: Soft palate (FMA55021). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
  2. TeachMeAnatomy. The Palate.
  3. OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §23.1 Overview of the Digestive System. Rice University, 2022.
  4. Mitsuhashi N. et al. (2009). BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 37, D782–D785. Data © The Database Center for Life Science, CC BY 4.0.
  5. Browne K., Schlehlein H. (2026). 3D Reference Organ Set for Male, v1.10 (Visible Human Male). Human Reference Atlas 3D Reference Object Library, HuBMAP / NIH. CC BY 4.0.

Related anatomy

Explore the whole body in the interactive 3D human anatomy model, or browse the A–Z list of human structures.