Ge. Gerstner et Vv. Parekh, EVIDENCE OF SEX-SPECIFIC DIFFERENCES IN MASTICATORY JAW MOVEMENT PATTERNS, Journal of dental research, 76(3), 1997, pp. 796-806
The complexity of human oral functional movements has not been studied
in detail quantitatively, and only recently have studies begun to eva
luate whether such movements contain sex-specific characteristics. The
refore, the purposes of this study were: (1) to quantify in detail the
jaw movements and associated masticatory electromyographic activity o
ccurring during gum chewing, and (2) to explore these data for evidenc
e of sex specificity. Fourteen male and 17 female subjects participate
d in the study. Approximately 11 right- and 11 left-sided chewing cycl
es and associated masticatory electromyographic activity were sampled
from each subject. The samples were quantified into 165 variables per
chewing cycle, averaged to create a single multivariate vector for eac
h subject, and then analyzed by a step-wise discriminant analysis. Wit
h a combination of 6 variables, a jackknifed cross-validation test fou
nd the probability of correct classification to be 93.5%. These findin
gs support the hypothesis that masticatory jaw movements contain sex-s
pecific features.