Does soft food affect the shape of the skull? Anna Walczak, a PhD student from the Faculty of Biology at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, is aiming to answer this question.
"I am analysing the consequences of changes that have occurred in the human masticatory organ over the last few hundred years as a result of dietary changes," she explains and she adds - "from hard, minimally processed foods to soft and highly processed foods."
This phenomenon is associated with an accumulation of orthodontic problems (malocclusion or delayed eruption of "wisdom teeth"). The biomechanical forces generated during chewing affect the entire skull, not just the teeth.
As part of the project, the doctoral student is analysing skull models from two historical populations - medieval and modern - obtained with a 3D scanner and skull images of contemporaries obtained with CT scans.
"I will make use of geometric morphometry, a method involving the superimposition of a dense grid of points on the objects under study in three-dimensional space. Although the origins of these processes are still unclear, I hope that my research will contribute to their elucidation," she concludes.
The study received funding in the PRELUDIUM competition of the National Science Centre Poland.
