Swallowing, or deglutition, is simple and smooth process to transport food and drink from the mouth to the stomach, whereas it is difficult to understand its physiological mechanism because it consists of complex neuromuscular coordination. Movements of the hyoid are important to describe swallowing in pharyngeal phase. We therefore develop a musculoskeletal model of the hyoid based on anatomical knowledge to verify activities of muscles around the hyoid in swallowing. Individual muscle force is estimated by the inverse dynamics computation and optimization. The estimation results of muscle force are compared to the results found in a previous study. The results of this study contributes to provide greater insight into swallowing and to improve treatments for dysphagia.
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