Wake-time Tooth Clenching with Music

Wake-time tooth clenching has been reported to contribute to temporomandibular disorders pain. In addition, it is highly frequent in subjects with TMD of muscular origin. Psychological factors play a non-negligible role to this oral parafunction, giv¬en that the frequency of tooth clenching is directly related to psychological distress and anxiety.

 

GML therapy to reduce pain

A wide accepted intervention to reduce pain is what is commonly known as Guided Music Listening (GML). This peculiar treatment is based on mood and attention modulation, proving to be well suited for individuals affected by chronic pain conditions. Listening to music can, indeed, positively impact the levels of psychological distress and anxiety, which are known to be increased in people reporting frequent wake¬ time tooth-clenching episodes. In addition, it has been shown that listening to music modulates corticospinal excitability and affects motor nerve re¬sponse. The effect on the motor cortex is depen¬dent on musical groove, which is a musical quality that can induce movement in a listener. Therefore, music with different tempos and styles may be used to either increase muscle activity or promote mus¬cle relaxation, thus making GML a potential tool for modulating jaw muscle activity, especially in individuals with TMD.

 

The effects of GML on chewing muscles

Cioffi and colleagues’ work was aimed at evaluating the effects of GML on masticatory muscles and on the amplitude of wake-time tooth clenching. Through Teethan’s technology, Masseter muscles activity was recorded during four 20-minute-long tasks, which were the following:

• no music task (i.e., reading a gossip magazine)
• favorite music task (i.e., listening to a favorite music playlist)
• relaxing music task (i.e., lis¬tening to harmonic and consonant music with a slow tempo)
• stress music task (i.e., listening to highly dissonant, atonal, and rhythmically unstable music)

Results showed that GML modulates the activity of the stomatognathic system, as expected. Furthermore, even though relaxing music decreases the activity of masticatory muscles and therefore impact parafunctional tooth clenching, on the other hand, it suggests that music promoting distraction – through stress/tension music) is what really brings improvements in avoiding detrimental activity of the jaw muscle, as wake-time clenching happens when concentration is promoted.

 

Conclusion

Testing treatments such as GML via an easy to use tool like Teethan, which, more than anything, offers objective data to rely on, is the key to select efficient rehabilitation programs to decrease TMD-induced pain.