Tongue reflex for speech posture control

Abstract

Although there is no doubt from an empirical viewpoint that reflex mechanisms can contribute to tongue motor control in humans, there is limited neurophysiological evidence to support this idea. Previous results failing to observe any tonic stretch reflex in the tongue had reduced the likelihood of a reflex contribution in tongue motor control. The current study presents experimental evidence of a human tongue reflex in response to a sudden stretch while holding a posture for speech. The latency was relatively long (50 ms), which is possibly mediated through cortical-arc. The activation peak in a speech task was greater than in a non-speech task while background activation levels were similar in both tasks, and the peak amplitude in a speech task was not modulated by the additional task to react voluntarily to the perturbation. Computer simulations with a simplified linear mass-spring-damper model showed that the recorded muscle activation response is suited for the generation of tongue movement responses that were observed in a previous study with the appropriate timing when taking into account a possible physiological delay between reflex muscle activation and the corresponding force. Our results evidenced clearly that reflex mechanisms contribute to tongue posture stabilization for speech production.