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Purpose: Bracing of the tongue against opposing vocal-tract surfaces such as the teeth or palate has long been discussed in the context of biomechanical, somatosensory, and aeroacoustic aspects of tongue movement. However, previous studies have tended to describe bracing only in terms of contact (rather than mechanical support), and only in limited phonetic contexts, supporting a widespread view of bracing as an occasional state, peculiar to specific sounds or sound combinations. Method: The present study tests the pervasiveness and effortfulness of tongue bracing in continuous English speech passages using electropalatography and 3-D biomechanical simulations. Results: The tongue remains in continuous contact with the upper molars during speech, with only rare exceptions. Use of the term bracing (rather than merely "contact") is supported here by biomechanical simulations showing that lateral bracing is an active posture requiring dedicated muscle activation; further, loss of lateral contact for onset /l/ allophones is found to be consistently accompanied by contact of the tongue blade against the anterior palate. In the rare instances where direct evidence for contact is lacking (only in a minority of low vowel and postvocalic /l/ tokens), additional biomechanical simulations show that lateral contact is maintained against pharyngeal structures dorsal to the teeth. Conclusion: Taken together, these results indicate that tongue bracing is both pervasive and active in running speech and essential in understanding tongue movement control.

Purpose: The authors' general aim is to use biomechanical models of speech articulators to explore how possible variations in anatomical structure contribute to differences in articulatory strategies and phone systems across human populations. Specifically, they investigated 2 issues: (a) the link between lip muscle anatomy and variability in lip gestures and (b) the constraints of coupled lip/jaw biomechanics on jaw posture in labial sounds. Method: The authors used a model coupling the jaw, tongue, and face. First, the influence of the orbicularis oris (OO) anatomical implementation was analyzed by assessing how changes in depth (from epidermis to the skull) and peripheralness (proximity to the lip horn center) affected lip shaping. Second, the capability of the lip/jaw system to generate protrusion and rounding, or "labial closure," was evaluated for different jaw heights. Results: Results showed that a peripheral and moderately deep OO implementation is most appropriate for protrusion and rounding; a superficial implementation facilitates closure; protrusion and rounding require a high jaw position; and closure is achievable for various jaw heights. Conclusions: Models provide objective information regarding possible links between anatomical and speech production variability across humans. Comparisons with experimental data will illustrate how motor control and cultural factors cope with these constraints. (Contains 4 tables and 10 figures.)

Objective: Musculoskeletal models play an important role in surgical planning and clinical assessment of gait and movement. Faster and more accurate simulation of muscle paths in such models can result in better predictions of forces and facilitate real-time clinical applications, such as rehabilitation with real-time feedback. We propose a novel and efficient method for computing wrapping paths across arbitrary surfaces, such as those defined by bone geometry. Methods: A muscle path is modeled as a massless, frictionless elastic strand that uses artificial forces, applied independently of the dynamic simulation, to wrap tightly around intervening obstacles. Contact with arbitrary surfaces is computed quickly using a distance grid, which is interpolated quadratically to provide smoother results. Results: Evaluation of the method demonstrates good accuracy, with mean relative errors of 0.002 or better when compared against simple cases with exact solutions. The method is also fast, with strand update times of around 0.5 msec for a variety of bone shaped obstacles. Conclusion: Our method has been implemented in the open source simulation system ArtiSynth (www.artisynth.org) and helps solve the problem of muscle wrapping around bones and other structures. Significance: Muscle wrapping on arbitrary surfaces opens up new possibilities for patient-specific musculoskeletal models where muscle paths can directly conform to shapes extracted from medical image data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A musculoskeletal model of the spine was created using ArtiSynth, an open-source biomechanical modelling toolkit. The model included the entire spine and rib cage, with the lumbar vertebrae being mobile and 210 muscle fascicles. Muscle parameters needed for a full Hill-type musculotendon model including tendon ratios and pennation angles along with muscle force-length and force-velocity curves were incorporated into the model, as were the nonlinear stiffness of the functional spinal units and the effect of intra-abdominal pressure. We used forward dynamics-assisted data tracking for the estimation of muscle forces and validated the solution method by comparing the predicted spinal forces vs. the results of two in vivo experiments in the literature. Our model produced larger maximum extension moment in flexion than extension, which is observed in in vivo experiments. These results could not be achieved without the inclusion of the muscle force-length relationship. The model was also able to predict the ratios of axial forces at L4-L5 as measured in vivo intradiscal pressures for three cases of upright standing, holding a crate close to and far from the chest. Due to the high stiffness of the spine, our solution method was sensitive to input kinematics, which hindered extensive validation of the model for body positions other than standing. Modifying the solution method, possibly by only tracking the angular motion of the vertebrae rather than their translational motion, should make the model less sensitive and enable further validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Computational modeling has improved our understanding of how muscle forces are coordinated to generate movement in musculoskeletal systems. Muscular-hydrostat systems, such as the human tongue, involve very different biomechanics than musculoskeletal systems, and modeling efforts to date have been limited by the high computational complexity of representing continuum-mechanics. In this study, we developed a computationally efficient tracking-based algorithm for prediction of muscle activations during dynamic 3D finite element simulations. The formulation uses a local quadratic-programming problem at each simulation time-step to find a set of muscle activations that generated target deformations and movements in finite element muscular-hydrostat models. We applied the technique to a 3D finite element tongue model for protrusive and bending movements. Predicted muscle activations were consistent with experimental recordings of tongue strain and electromyography. Upward tongue bending was achieved by recruitment of the superior longitudinal sheath muscle, which is consistent with muscular-hydrostat theory. Lateral tongue bending, however, required recruitment of contralateral transverse and vertical muscles in addition to the ipsilateral margins of the superior longitudinal muscle, which is a new proposition for tongue muscle coordination. Our simulation framework provides a new computational tool for systematic analysis of muscle forces in continuum-mechanics models that is complementary to experimental data and shows promise for eliciting a deeper understanding of human tongue function. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We present an open-source physical simulation system suitable for efficient modeling of anatomical structures composed of both hard and soft tissue components, interconnected by point-wise attachments, contact, and other constraints. Specific attention is paid to the computational formulation needed for the coupled simulation of rigid and deformable structures, and a constraint-based mechanism is described for attaching these together. As an application of this system, we then present a novel 3D dynamic model of the jaw-tongue-hyoid complex, consisting of an FEM model of the tongue, rigid jaw, and hyoid structures, point-to-point muscle actuators, and constraints for bite contact and the temporomandibular joints. Several simulations are presented showing combined jaw-tongue actions and demonstrating the effects of coupled jaw-tongue-hyoid dynamics. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deficits in movement and bite force are common in patients following segmental resection of the mandible consequent to oral cancer or injury. We have previously developed a dynamic model to analyse the biomechanics of an ungrafted segmental jaw resection with unilateral muscle and joint loss and post-surgical scarring. Here, we describe an inverse-modelling algorithm for automatically predicting muscle activations in the model for prescribed jaw movement and bite-force production. We present the results of simulations that postulate combined muscle activation patterns that could theoretically be used by patients to overcome post-surgical deficits. Such predictions could be the basis for future muscle retraining in clinical cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the authors discuss various articles published within the issue on such topics as anatomical visualisation, swallowing simulation and visualisation, and knee joint contact biomechanics in walking.

Some of the jaw tracking methods may be limited in terms of their accuracy or clinical applicability. This article introduces the sphere-based registration method to minimize the fiducial (reference landmark) localization error (FLE) in tracking and coregistration of physical and virtual dental models, to enable an effective clinical analysis of the patient’s masticatory functions. In this method, spheres (registration fiducials) are placed on the corresponding polygonal concavities of the physical and virtual dental models based on the geometrical principle that establishes a unique spatial position for a sphere inside an infinite trihedron. The experiments in this study were implemented using an optical system which tracked active tracking markers connected to the upper and lower dental casts. The accuracy of the tracking workflow was confirmed in vitro, based on comparing virtually calculated interocclusal regions of close proximity against the physical interocclusal impressions. The target registration error of the tracking was estimated based on the leave-one-sphere-out method to be the sum of the error of the sensors, i.e., the FLE was negligible. Moreover, based on a user study, the FLE of the proposed method was confirmed to be 5 and 10 times smaller than the FLE of conventional fiducial selections on the physical and virtual models, respectively. The proposed tracking method is non-invasive and appears to be sufficiently accurate. To conclude, the proposed registration and tracking principles can be extended to track any biomedical and non-biomedical geometries that contain polygonal concavities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]