Takada Toshihisa, Miyamoto Tamaki
Department of Oral Functional Science, Graduate School of Dental Medicine, Hokkaido University, Kita-13, Nishi-7, Kita-Ku, Sapporo, 006-8586, Japan.
Neurosci Lett. 2004 Apr 29;360(3):137-40. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2004.02.052.
The purpose of this study is to investigate human brain activity during mastication using fMRI. Twelve right-handed normal subjects performed two tasks: chewing of gum at their own pace, and imitating the movements of chewing gum. In order to reveal which areas of the brain are more strongly activated while chewing gum, we performed the conjunction analyses of gum chewing minus sham chewing with gum chewing minus rest. The common activity in the orofacial sensorimotor and premotor cortex was subtracted out since it was common to both tasks, but there were some differences in activity in some prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex areas. Our results suggest that a fronto-parietal network for mastication exists and may contribute to higher cognitive information processing.
本研究的目的是使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来调查咀嚼过程中的人脑活动。12名右利手正常受试者执行了两项任务：以自己的节奏咀嚼口香糖，以及模仿咀嚼口香糖的动作。为了揭示在咀嚼口香糖时大脑的哪些区域被更强烈地激活，我们进行了咀嚼口香糖减去假咀嚼与咀嚼口香糖减去休息的联合分析。由于口面部感觉运动和运动前皮层的共同活动在两项任务中都存在，因此将其减去，但在一些前额叶和顶叶后皮层区域的活动存在一些差异。我们的结果表明，存在一个用于咀嚼的额顶叶网络，并且可能有助于更高层次的认知信息处理。
