As Miriam Margoles says in the Voiceover book “Don’t Eat Toast”.  When your mind is on something other than chewing and swallowing while you’re eating, then crumbs, crisps, etc can go down your trachea (airway) instead of into your esophagus (stomach) causing you to choke (aspiration).  Not great when you’re being paid for a good voice job.  It’s okay once you relax and drink water – just try damage limitation by not coughing too much.

 Essentially, it is very difficult to separate and identify the role of individual muscles in a laryngeal set-up as muscle function is inter-related, in general though, everything is wonderfully coordinated.