The role of the basal ganglia in the bruxism and the development of the method for that estimation

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It is still unknown how the bruxism are occurred and how the brain is involved in the bruxism. The aim of this project was to clarify the role of the basal ganglia in the bruxism. For this purpose we first examined whether the bruxism was able to be evoked experimentally or not, and secondly how the basal ganglia was involved in the oral function. Unfortunately we could not induce the bruxism either by stimulation to the basal ganglia or by making the basal ganglia lesion. Concerning the relationship between the mastication and the basal ganglia and also the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathway, we obtained the findings in this study as follows ;1) It has been known that the masticatory sequence in the rabbit can be divided into three stages (stage I, IIa, IIb) based on the form of the jaw movements. It is found that electrical stimulation to the basal ganglia during stage II modulated the jaw movements. This result suggested that the basal ganglia might be involved in the alteration of the jaw movements according to the progress of masticatory sequence.2) Using the microdialysis method, the dopamine concentration in the putamen increased significantly during mastication compared with resting period. And the bilateral 6-hydroxydopamine lesions of the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathway induced the change of the movement pattern during intake behavior. These results suggested that the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathway might play a role in the sequential progress during the mastication.In this study, we showed the data, which suggested the basal ganglia might play a role in the control of orofacial fuctional behavior. We hope that our findings will be useful for the experiments studying the mechanism of the bruxism in the future.