The influence of tonic muscle activation on human jaw displacement tremor

Jaw displacement tremor was investigated. Both tremor amplitude and tremor frequency were found to increase with increasing muscle activation. Co-contraction of jaw elevator and jaw depressor muscles was employed in order to vary muscle activation levels without the teeth being in occlusion. Reproducibility of tremor changes was statistically significant for each individual investigated. The relationship between tremor frequency and tremor amplitude, over the range of muscle activation investigated, varied per individual. It is hypothesized that the physiological basis for this inter-individual variation is differences in the development of jaw stiffness with increasing muscle activation between subjects. This explanation may be the basis, at least in part, for the clinical presence of objective jaw stiffness in one subject and its absence in another.