title: Use of electromagnetic midsagittal articulography in the study of swallowing.
abstract: The tongue functions as the primary articulator during the oropharyngeal stages of swallowing. However, detailed descriptions of the kinematics and spatiotemporal variability of tongue behaviors during swallowing are limited to a handful of analyses of data from the X-ray microbeam database. In this article, a new technique, electromagnetic midsagittal articulography (EMMA), is introduced for the high-resolution description of oral articulatory movements during swallowing. Data from 8 healthy, nondysphagic participants are used to illustrate the methods used for data collection and analysis. Movement data were collected for 3 fleshpoint positions on the tongue (blade, body, dorsum) during sequences of repeated discrete water swallows, and were characterized for variables of spatiotemporal variability and 4 discrete kinematic parameters (movement amplitude, peak velocity, duration, and kinematic stiffness). These data show that the movement trajectories measured using EMMA are consistent with descriptions from previous X-ray microbeam studies, indicating that EMMA is a feasible method for the detailed study of tongue movements during swallowing.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Department of Speech Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. catriona.steele@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: Catriona M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Steele
authors.forename: Pascal H H M
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Van Lieshout
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003679:Deglutition / Q000502:physiology*; D055590:Electromagnetic Phenomena / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D014059:Tongue / Q000502:physiology*