ORAL ANATOMY 2024

Activity:    Use your own body as learning aid to experience the TMJ and its movements

Duration: 15-20 minutes

 Instructions:

 After listening to the lecture and viewing/reading the learning resources do the following:

1.  Put your forefingers immediately in front of the tragus of your right and left ears. Open and close your mouth. Can you feel a small round thing moving? This is the condyle moving against the glenoid fossa.
2. Slowly move your mandible to the right. Experience what was discussed in the lecture as Bennet Shift or the lateral movement of the mandible.
3. Place your fingers on your temple and cheeks, near the angle of the mandible. Now, clench your teeth. Do you feel the muscles contracting? These are your temporalis and masseter muscles, elevators of the mandible.
4. Open your mouth wide, the widest opening possible. Do you feel a certain stretch on both your TMJ’s? The structure that is being “stretched” is one of the accessory ligaments of the TMJ, the sphenomandibular ligament which is the main suspensory ligament during wider jaw/mouth opening.