  The tongue is a crucial organ for performing basic biological functions, such
as chewing, swallowing and phonation. Understanding how it behaves, its motor
control and involvement in the execution of these different tasks is therefore
an important issue for the management and therapeutic treatment of pathologies
relating to these essential functions so that quality of life can be preserved.
This chapter focuses on the biomechanical modeling of this organ, as one of the
key steps towards this understanding. Such a modeling will be an important tool
to predict and control the functional impact of lingual surgery in the field of
computer-assisted medical interventions.
