Role of Basal Ganglia in Swallowing Process: A Systematic Review

The basal ganglia (BG) controls different patterns of behavior by receiving inputs from sensory-motor and pre-motor cortex and projecting it to pre-frontal, pre-motor and supplementary motor areas. As the exact role of BG in swallowing process has not been fully determined, we aimed at reviewing the published data on neurological control in the swallowing technique to have a better understanding of BG’s role in this performance.
English-language articles, which were published before December 2015 and eligible for the present research, were extracted from databases according to the inclusion criteria, i.e. articles related to “neurological aspects of swallowing” and/or “lesions of sub-cortical or BG relevant to swallowing disorders”.
This systematic review indicates that BG is a complicated neurological structure with indistinct functions and that swallowing is a sophisticated process with several unknown aspects.
Swallowing is a multifaceted performance that needs contribution of the tongue, larynx, pharynx, and esophagus as well as the neurological structures such as neocortex and subcortical regions - BG and brainstem.