A window to consolidate the "functional hypothesis of bruxism" through cardiovascular autonomic link

Abstract

Bruxism was recently revisited in order to address a number of questions not yet clarified (Lobbezoo et al., 2018). Among different domains, pathophysiological relationship between bruxism, eitherawake or during sleep, and formal disorder is not totally clarified, thus leading to a classification of bruxism considering that, at least in some cases, motor events would be associated to negative health‐related outcomes (Meira e Cruz & Ettlin, 2018) and therefore should be classified as a risk factor even when some protective value is as ‐sociated to such behavior.Autonomic function has been intended an important topic of de ‐bate when considering oromotor activity (e.g., bruxism) as a possible reactive physiological challenge, rather accepted as an epiphenom‐enon. In a recent work, it showed a correlation between autonomic function and bruxism either influenced by sympathetic nerve or by parasympathetic nerve activity (Nukazawa, Yoshimi, & Sato, 2018) corroborating findings of other studies revealing an association be ‐tween bruxism and autonomic activity (Lavigne et al., 2007) and even between bruxism and cardiovascular risk (Atilgan et al., 2011; Marconcini et al., 2018).