The effect of the sensory information in the anticipatory stage on feeding action

本研究的目的是探讨进食预期阶段的感觉信息对食物捕捉的影响，并比较青年和老年人的结果。本研究由两部分组成：(1)抓食过程中的闭唇压力分析，(2)抓食动作分析。在研究(1)中，分析并比较了两个年龄组在4种情况下的闭唇压力强度和持续时间的平均值，以及唇压力波形。结果表明，在没有视觉信息的情况下，受试者的压力时间更长，这在年轻人中尤为明显。此外，老年人闭唇压力的稳定性低于年轻人，特别是在没有任何关于食物的感官信息的情况下。提示感官信息通过改变唇压持续时间和压力的稳定性来影响唇压。从三维运动分析的结果来看，老年人的嘴张得不像年轻人那么大，尤其是当他们没有视觉和/或语言信息的时候。此外，当视觉和语言信息被阻断时，老年组的张嘴时间比青年组短。

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of sensory information in the anticipatory stage of feeding on food capturing, and to compare the results obtained from young adults and from the elderly.This study comprised of two parts : (1) analysis of lip closing pressure during food capturing ,and (2) analysis of food capturing motionIn study(1),the average of the strength and the duration, and waveform of the lip pressure were analyzed and compared between 4 conditions in both age groups.Results show that without visual information the subjects make a longer pressure, which is significant in young adults. In addition, with the elderly, stability of lip closing pressure is lower than young adults especially in the condition without any sensory information regarding the food. It was suggested that sensory information affect the lip pressure by altering the duration and the stability of the pressure.From the results of three-dimensional motion analysis, the elderly had a tendency not to open their mouths as wide as young adults, especially when they had no visual and/or verbal information. Moreover, mouth-opening period was shorter in the elderly group than the youth group when the visual and verbal information were blocked off.