Welcome

Welcome to oral physiology division.

In this division we do research on mastication and swallowing. Mastication and swallowing is an essential physiological process in human as well as in animal kingdom. These processes can be said as a gateway of health. Any disorder in this process may affect the entire health. These physiological processes involve several phenomenons such as food intake, intra-oral food transport, chewing and bolus formation for swallowing. It is worth-while to understand the regulatory mechanism of this complex but coordinated phenomenon for treating disorders of these processes as well as oro-facial region. We seek to understand the neurophysiological basis of this complex physiological process. For this purpose, we have been devoted our study to investigate:

1. How jaw reflexes contribute to natural mastication and how they themselves aremodulated during natural mastication.

2. How sensory information from orofacial areas during natural mastication is modulated and how this modulation contributes to mastication.

3. How mastication is affected by induced pathological condition in orofacial tissues.

4. Role of primary motor area of cerebral cortex in natural mastication.

5. The neurophysiological basis of swallowing. How different sensory information (such as food consistency) modulate swallowing reflex. (in human experiment).

6. Suitable foods for dysphagic patients.7. Whether there has been any difference in neural mechanism of mastication between wild type and knockout mice (GABA, AMPA, BDNF, NT 4/5 knockout mice).

We are using electrophysiological methods in acute and chronic animal model (rabbit ,mice, recently in knockout mice) and human model to understand the neural basis of mastication and swallowing.

Professor Kensuke Yanamura