Читать книгу Dental Neuroimaging - Chia-shu Lin - Страница 21

If we look into any textbook of clinical dentistry – be it oral pathology, prosthodontics, periodontics or orthodontics – we may not feel surprised that the word ‘brain’ would appear just very few times in the whole book. Traditionally, dentists are trained as an expert in treating oral diseases and the topics related to the brain, and its relevant disorders are usually categorized as systemic issues. The dichotomy of ‘dental vs. systemic’ suggests that the brain and behaviour issues are beyond the spotlight of dentists. Such alienation is even pronounced if we hold a ‘pathological perspective’ on the association between the brain and dentistry: oral diseases are usually not the primary aetiology of neurological/mental disorders, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal or endocrinal diseases (Figure 1.1). Therefore, there is no urgent need for dentists to learn the knowledge of the human brain.

However, the association between the brain and dentistry may show a different story if we adopt a ‘functional perspective’. Here, the brain, behaviour and oral health are directly linked if we consider that the brain plays a crucial role in maintaining oral functions, and the integrity of mental functions is critical to maintaining oral health. If we adopt the view that the brain and mental functions guided by the brain are essential to all human behaviours (e.g. from eating to toothbrushing), we may find that the brain has an essential and more dominant role in oral health (Figure 1.1).

In the following sections, we elaborate on this functional perspective by revisiting three lines of evidence. Historically, we see that dentistry and brain science are the ‘old alliance’ for more than 100 years. Educationally, we discuss the role of neuroscience in the curriculum of dental education. Finally, the new engagement between dentistry and the brain via neuroimaging methods is highlighted.