Somatosensory evoked magnetic fields following tongue and hard palate stimulation on the preferred chewing side

Although oral sensory feedback is essential for mastication, whether the cortical activity elicited by oral stimulation is associated with the preferred chewing side (PCS) is unclear. Somatosensory evoked fields were measured in 12 healthy volunteers (6 with the right side as the PCS and 6 with the left side as the PCS) following tongue and hard palate stimulation. Three components were identified over the contralateral (P40m, P60m, and P80m) and ipsilateral [P40m(I), P60m(I), and P80m(I)] hemispheres. Since no component was consistently detected across subjects, we evaluated the cortical activity over each hemisphere using the activated root-mean-square (aRMS), which was the mean amplitude of the 18-channel RMS between 10 and 150 ms. For tongue stimulation, the aRMS for each hemisphere was 8.23 ± 1.55 (contralateral, mean ± SEM) and 4.67 ± 0.88 (ipsilateral) fT/cm for the PCS, and 5.11 ± 1.10 (contralateral) and 4.03 ± 0.82 (ipsilateral) fT/cm for the non-PCS. For palate stimulation, the aRMS was 5.35 ± 0.58 (contralateral) and 4.62 ± 0.67 (ipsilateral) fT/cm for the PCS, and 4.63 ± 0.56 (contralateral) and 4.14 ± 0.60 (ipsilateral) fT/cm for the non-PCS. For hard palate stimulation, the aRMS did not differ between the PCS and non-PCS, whereas for tongue stimulation, the contralateral hemisphere aRMS was significantly greater for the PCS than for the non-PCS. Thus, our results show that lateralized cortical activation was associated with the PCS for tongue, but not hard palate, stimulation; a potential reason for this may be the different sensory-inputs between these two areas, specifically the presence or absence of fine motor function.