I have been involved in supporting everyone from top athletes to sports enthusiasts and students striving in athletic clubs through research and clinical practice as a sports dentist.

Through nurturing（orthodontic treatment）and maintaining ‘Masticatory ability’, I have aimed to promote safe sports activities and enhance athletic performance. When I graduated from university a quarter-century ago, the primary themes were “functional maintenance” and injury prevention/treatment using protective devices like ‘mouthguards’ or “mouthpieces.” Research, including elucidating the “remote muscle facilitation effect,” began highlighting the role of the cervical and maxillofacial regions connecting the head to the entire body. I revisited and explained the role of stomatognathic function in exerting muscle function and maintaining body balance, as well as the modulation of motor function and its underlying mechanisms. We have also begun to consider the benefits and drawbacks of “clenching one’s teeth on exertion motor function.”

In recent years, the dentition has been reevaluated as an organ for fixing measurement devices. The accuracy of injury severity assessment at the time of trauma is improving, and moreover the immediate diagnostic systems for concussion are also being developed. However, since these systems operate without direct involvement from dentists, we will also share information regarding areas requiring future improvement（on wearing oral appliances such as occlusal adjustment, reducing discomfort etc.）where your cooperation will be appreciated.

Regarding the maintenance of stomatognathic functions to enhance sports performance, this aimed to deliver reports from a dentist’s perspective on how to communicate effectively. This lecture covered the perspectives of nurture, maintenance, management, recovery, and enhancement, targeting not only athletes and enthusiasts but also coaches, healthcare professionals from other disciplines, and sports science specialists.

This paper discusses the challenges and strategies for continuously publishing high-quality research papers. Traditionally, research capability has been evaluated based on the number of papers and cumulative impact factors. However, these metrics have been criticized for failing to fully reflect the characteristics of different research fields. In recent years, the concept of “depth,” which assesses the sustainable research capability of an entire institution, has been gaining importance. In Japan, although the total number of research papers has been maintained, the proportion of high-impact papers has declined due to insufficient time available for research. To address this issue, efficient research management at the individual level, division of labor within research groups, and enhanced support systems provided by administrators are essential. Key aspects of writing research papers include establishing a clear research question, maintaining logical consistency, and thoroughly revising the manuscript. Moreover, improving research skills through critical review of papers is highly recommended. Researchers, research groups, and institutions should each make efforts from their respective positions to contribute to a sustainable research environment.

Considering the relationship between sensory and motor elements in the jaw and oral cavity function, it has been observed that jaw movement is controlled by the sensation of occlusal contact of the teeth and that the periodontal ligament sensation is altered by the clenching of the upper and lower teeth. Thus, not only are sensation and movement closely related, but also sensation is one of the functions of the jaw and oral cavity. Hence, it is essential to elucidate the function of sensation in the study of jaw and oral cavity function. The main senses of the jaw and oral cavity include taste, classified as a special sense; cutaneous sensations such as touch, pain, warmth, and cold; deep sensations linked to muscular sensation; and organ sensations related to physiological states, notably thirst. Human subjects are exposed to various types of stimuli（taste, mechanical, temperature, etc.）, and the sensation and its corresponding intensity are subjected to investigation. There are methods to investigate neural activity after stimulation using electroencephalography, cerebral blood flow, functional MRI, and magnetoencephalography. In animal studies, there are also methods to investigate the behavior of animals after various types of stimulation and methods to analyze sensory nerve activity electrophysiologically and biochemically. Each of these research modalities has its advantages and disadvantages, necessitating a comprehensive understanding.

The contraction forces of the jaw muscles, tongue muscles, and even facial muscles are used as power sources of kinetic energy to perform various functions of the stomatognathic system, such as mastication, swallowing, and breathing. They are expressed as occlusal forces on the dentition or temporomandibular joints, which further induce mechanical stress within each tissue and trigger mechanobiological responses to that stress, such as inflammation and bone remodeling. These “forces and biological reactions” are closely related to the success or failure of prosthetic dental treatments and the onset of temporomandibular dysfunction. In other words, to obtain favorable outcomes in prosthetic treatment, appropriate force control is essential; therefore, it is important to quantify the forces applied to the dentition during function. We previously developed a system that can measure three-dimensional loads applied to teeth and implants, in vivo, by incorporating small piezoelectric transducers into dental crown prosthetic devices and performing load measurements under various conditions. However, it is difficult to accurately measure loads in the oral cavity, and there were many obstacles. In this review, we introduce the path taken to develop our load measurement method and review the important aspects of in vivo load measurements.