Jaw muscle activity for speech and nonspeech gestures
Michèle Gentil, Thomas Gay · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1983
The activity patterns of the mandibular elevator muscle system were investigated for speech and nonspeech gestures for the purpose of determining the possibility of neuromuscular specialization for speech in relation to other mandibular functions. Intra-muscular wire electrodes were placed into the seven mucles of the mandibular system and the anterior belly of the digastric. The activity of these muscles was recorded along with a time varying magnetometer voltage that corresponded to the displacement of the jaw in two and three dimensional space. These signals were recorded from three adult American English subjects during the production of speech at different rates and for nonspeech gestures that included border movements, functional opening-and-closing and mastication. Results indicated that jaw space for speech is the most restricted of any mandibular function, jaw movements for speech are generally produced by the most simple muscle action patterns and individual differences exist in the selection of a given muscle or muscle system for a specific function and/or utterance, and in the coordination of muscle activity patterns for any particular gesture. [Research supported by a grant from the National Institute of Health (NS-10424).]