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Investigation of variation factors in EMG measurement of swallowing: instruction can improve EMG reproducibility

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Abstract

Variability in swallowing electromyography (EMG) has been reported to occur due to individual differences, even in studies with appropriate control of factors affecting EMG such as food type, properties, and posture. The increased variability broadens the confidence intervals of measures obtained from EMG, such as time and amplitude, and makes it difficult to detect differences in muscle activity. This makes it impossible to detect slight changes in swallowing function at an early stage, which is required for clinical examination. In this study, we focused on the tipper type and dipper type of oral swallows, which differ in the timing of muscle activity. The frequency of occurrence of both types varies between participants, and both types could occur in the same participant. In this study, we measured swallowing EMG wherein participants were instructed to swallow with a tipper and a dipper. The results showed that there was a significant difference in the between-participant duration between these two types of swallows. Within-participant variability was significantly lower in the tipper-dipper instruction condition compared to the baseline condition, which assumed a mixture of tipper-dipper swallowing. These results demonstrate that instructions on swallowing method are effective in improving the reproducibility of EMG.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants who participated in the experiments. In addition, the authors wish to thank: Dr. Hidekazu Kaneko, who is a Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan; Dr. Syuji Ishiguro, who is the Division Director of the Nagano Prefecture General Industrial Technology Center in Japan; and Dr. Yoshito Koyama and Dr. Hiroshi Kurita from Shinshu University in Japan for their valuable opinions. Finally, we would like to acknowledge Mr. Tomoki Sawano and Ms. Aasahi Koyama for their valuable research support.

Funding

This study was supported by the Strategic Information and Communications R&D Promotion Programme (SCOPE), the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Japan, and the JSPS KAKENHI grant numbers JP17H00755, 19K12887, 20H04567, and 20K11929.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nagano Prefecture General Industrial Technology Center, Nagano, Japan

    Nobuyuki Ohmori

  2. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan

    Nobuyuki Ohmori, Hiroshi Endo & Manabu Chikai

  3. National Institute of Technology, Nagano College, Nagano, Japan

    Seiichi Watanabe

  4. SKINOS Co., Ltd., Ueda, Japan

    Hideya Momose

  5. Graduate School of Engineering Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Shuichi Ino

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  1. Nobuyuki Ohmori
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Correspondence to Nobuyuki Ohmori.

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Ohmori, N., Watanabe, S., Momose, H. et al. Investigation of variation factors in EMG measurement of swallowing: instruction can improve EMG reproducibility. Med Biol Eng Comput 60, 2825–2840 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-022-02590-4

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