Craniofacial Neuroscience

Craniofacial impairments, abnormalities, and disorders can result from genetic conditions, neurodegeneration, neurotrauma, and/or cranial nerve damage. It affects people of all age groups, sex, race, and ethnicity. These impairments decrease quality of life through decreased oral hygiene, psychosocial anxiety, chronic pain, speech impairments, developmental delays, dysphagia and/or dystussia. Scientific investigations of these impairments are often overlooked due to their complex nature which span multiple scientific branches such as genetics, physiology, neuroscience, critical care, speech language pathology, physical therapy, dentistry, etc. There is a great need to interact with multiple scientific disciplines to further the advancement of therapies and rehabilitation for craniofacial diseases and disorders.

To restore functions that are life sustaining (feeding, swallowing, coughing, chewing, taste, breathing) and vital to communication (speech, facial expressions, etc). These functions require fine and coordinated motor control of nerves, muscles, and hard tissues of the craniofacial complex, which can be influences by many sensory and special sensory inputs. These functions are impaired in almost every neurologic disease or following injury with no age or sex/gender boundaries.



We aim to connect dentists, speech language pathologists, neuroscientists, physiologists, and engineers to provide insights into the latest discoveries related to the vital craniofacial functions that can impact craniofacial rehabilitation.

We want to create a hub for interdisciplinary research of both basic and clinical science focusing on craniofacial functions. We will accept manuscripts in the form of original research, and reviews/mini-reviews, brief research reports, perspectives, and clinical trials.