Bruxism movements that occur with seizure disorders (e.g. epilepsy). This usually involves a dental examination, and possibly electroencephalography if a seizure disorder is suspected. Polysomnography shows increased masseter and temporalis muscular activity during sleep. Polysomnography may involve electroencephalography, electromyography, electrocardiography, air flow monitoring and audio–video recording. It may be useful to help exclude other sleep disorders; however, due to the expense of the use of a sleep lab, polysomnography is mostly of relevance to research rather than routine clinical diagnosis of bruxism. Tooth wear may be brought to the person's attention during routine dental examination. With awake bruxism, most people will
Bruxism often initially deny clenching and grinding because they are unaware of the habit. Often, the person may re-attend soon after the first visit and report that they have now become aware of such a habit. Several devices have been developed that aim to objectively measure bruxism activity, either in terms of muscular activity or bite forces. They have been criticized for introducing a possible change in the bruxing habit, whether increasing or decreasing it, and are therefore poorly representative to the native bruxing activity. These are mostly of relevance to research, and are rarely used in the routine clinical diagnosis