Perturbed oral motor control due to anesthesia during intraoral manipulation of food

Abstract

Sensory information from periodontal mechanoreceptors (PMRs) surrounding the roots of natural teeth is important for optimizing the positioning of food and adjustment of force vectors during precision biting. The present experiment was designed to test the hypothesis; that reduction of afferent inputs from the PMRs, by anesthesia, perturbs the oral fine motor control and related jaw movements during intraoral manipulation of morsels of food. Thirty healthy volunteers with a natural dentition were equally divided into experimental and control groups. The participants in both groups were asked to manipulate and split a spherical candy into two equal halves with the front teeth. An intervention was made by anesthetizing the upper and lower incisors of the experimental group while the control group performed the task without intervention. Performance of the split was evaluated and the jaw movement recorded. The experimental group demonstrated a significant decrease in measures of performance following local anesthesia. However, there was no significant changes in the duration or position of the jaw during movements in the experimental and control group. In conclusion, transient deprivation of sensory information from PMRs perturbs oral fine motor control during intraoral manipulation of food, however, no significant alterations in duration or positions of the jaw during movements can be observed.

Motor control strategies during unpredictable force control tasks in humans

“…[35][36][37][38] Further, studies have also investigated the effect of perturbation caused by alteration of sensory inputs on jaw motor control in normal healthy adults. 10,39,40 Other studies have also investigated the dynamics of precision and accuracy in jaw and hand motor control during biting and pinching tasks. 18,22,33 However, in the current experiment, we investigated the motor control strategies in response to unpredictable load changes during motor control tasks.…”

“…Occasionally, the feedforward mechanism can be perturbed if any of the sensory-driven action phases of the task sub-goals are unsuccessfully accomplished. 6,10 To compensate for these perturbations in the feedforward mechanism, the motor system monitors the errors in accomplishing the task sub-goals and updates the motor program by gathering the necessary information to ensure task progression. 2,6,11 The alternative prediction and feedback processing of the motor program is extensively studied in the hand/digit manipulation tasks in human.…”

Effect of periodontal disease on electromyographic activity of muscles of mastication: A cross‐sectional study

“…The absence of sensory input results in reduced masticatory force and distorted spatial control of jaw movements during chewing . Various studies report that the anaesthetic alteration of orofacial afferent inputs from periodontal mechanoreceptors perturbs fine oral motor control during intraoral manipulation of food …”

Effect of Sudden Deprivation of Sensory Inputs From Periodontium on Mastication

“…Likewise, other animal studies suggest that signals from muscle spindles are most important during the early phases of force generation, whereas inputs from both muscle spindles and PMRs are important during the later phases (Lavigne et al, 1987;Morimoto et al, 1989). Previously, we have shown impaired force control and impaired spatial regulation in healthy young adults after anesthesia of the teeth during biting tasks (Trulsson and Johansson, 1996;Grigoriadis et al, 2017;Kumar et al, 2017). We have previously also described the chewing sequence, chewing cycle, and time-varying activation profile of the masseter muscle and how food hardness affects the profile during natural chewing in healthy participants (Grigoriadis et al, 2014).…”