This study investigated the effects of pre-oral sensorimotor cues on anticipatory swallowing/eating-related mouth movements in older and younger adults. It was hypothesized that these cues are essential to timing anticipatory oral-motor patterns and these movements are delayed in older as compared to younger adults.
Using a two-by-two repeated measures design, eating-related lip, jaw, and hand movements were recorded from 24 healthy older (ages 70-85) and 24 healthy younger (ages 18-30) adults under four conditions: typical self-feeding, typical assisted feeding (proprioceptive loss), sensory loss self-feeding (auditory and visual loss/degradation), and sensory loss assisted feeding (loss/degradation of all cues).
All participants demonstrated anticipatory mouth opening. The absence of proprioception delayed lip lowering onset, while sensory loss more negatively impacted offset. Given at least one pre-oral sensorimotor cue, older adults initiated movement earlier than younger adults.
Pre-oral sensorimotor information influences anticipatory swallowing/eating-related mouth movements, highlighting the importance of these cues. Earlier movement in older adults may be a compensation facilitating safe swallowing given other age-related declines. Further research is needed to determine whether the negative impact of cue removal may be further exacerbated in a non-healthy system (e.g., presence of dysphagia or disease), potentially increasing swallowing- and eating-related risks.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 April 2016.
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#21,890,723
of 34,358,242 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research
#2,597
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Outputs of similar age
#191,549
of 338,436 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research
#10
of 17 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,358,242 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 36th percentile – i.e., 36% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,508 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.1. This one is in the 42nd percentile – i.e., 42% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 17 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 41st percentile – i.e., 41% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
