The cry reflex is one of many early childhood movement reflexes that are triggered by certain stimuli. When the baby is held up under the armpits and the feet feel a firm surface, it moves the legs in a kicking pattern reminiscent of striding and walking. The reflex is present at birth and slowly diminishes 2 months after birth.
What is the pacing reflex?
When the baby is held up under the armpits and the feet feel a firm surface, it moves the legs in a kicking pattern reminiscent of striding and walking. The cry reflex is one of the early motor reflexes triggered by certain touches or position of the body or head and follows an innate pattern that occurs unconsciously, without involvement of the cerebrum. Reflexes are therefore reproducible over and over again and are not subject to a learning process. The cry reflex is triggered when the baby is placed and held in an upright position and the feet feel a firm base. It then seems to simply want to march off and performs step-like movements with its legs. The crying reflex develops at an early stage of pregnancy and becomes noticeable before birth through occasional kicking. Normally, the reflex disappears about two months after birth. The early disappearance of the reflex indicates that it cannot be associated with learning to walk upright. Conscious walking on two legs poses great challenges to coordination and body orientation skills and to the resilience of certain muscle parts and ]]joints. It is not until around ten to twelve months of age that babies develop the urge to practice upright walking, as a follow-up to crawling.
Function and task
Most early motor reflexes serve to protect the baby and facilitate feeding. Without the sucking and swallowing reflex, which is triggered in the baby by touching the lip region, feeding would not be possible in the early postnatal period. A few reflexes are already present prenatally and serve mainly to support the birth process. The cry reflex is also one of the motor reflexes that are already present and developed many weeks before the due date. The fact that the reflex regresses as early as one to two months after birth suggests that it has no significant postnatal function. It has no significance for the learning of upright gait because by that time it has long since degenerated and upright walking on two legs is a complex, multisensory, voluntary process coordinated by the neocortex. The later automation of upright walking is made possible by storing the multisensory processes in the so-called multisensory movement memory. There is no connection with any motor reflexes and, accordingly, cannot be associated with the cry reflex of a newborn. The postnatal benefit of the cry reflex is not clear. Its utility most likely lies in the prenatal period. The reflex makes itself felt prenatally by occasional kicking of the baby in the womb as soon as it bumps the wall of the uterus with the sole of its foot. It is very likely that the main significance of the cry reflex is to promote brain maturation and leg muscles. It may also have a special significance for assuming the correct birth position, which the unborn baby can better achieve by its reflexive kicking.
Diseases and ailments
Some of the early infant reflexes, also known as primitive reflexes, have a central importance for birth and for the survival of the newborn in the first stage of life. Reflexes whose importance lies in the prenatal period usually regress shortly after birth. The remaining motor reflexes regress during the first twelve months of life because their functions are usually taken over by voluntary motor processes. However, a few reflexes remain throughout life, such as the eyelid closure reflex, which serves to protect the eyeball from foreign bodies or extreme light incidence. Another example is the temperature reflex, which triggers a lightning-quick retraction of the hand if the fingers, e.g., are not in contact with the skin.B. come into contact with a hot stove top. E
n absence of the cry reflex after birth has no immediately threatening effects on the newborn, because the reflex has no particular significance for the postnatal period. However, in that case it should be clarified why the reflex is not present or too weakly developed. On the one hand, there could be maldevelopments in the leg and hip muscles or in the functionality of the joints, on the other hand, there could be maldevelopments in the central nervous system or in the peripheral nervous system or in the innervation or nerve conduction. Before further examinations and clarifications, other motor and non-motor reflexes can serve as a differential diagnosis. What may sound strange at first is the fact that the absence of certain reflexes usually has much less serious consequences than their persistence. If certain reflexes are not abolished around the natural time, but remain as reflexes, this hinders the transition to voluntary control of motor processes by corresponding centers in the neocortex. If the cry reflex is not broken down in the first or second month of life, the learning phase for upright gait is very difficult because reflex leg movements interfere with the learning process. Among experts, poorly degraded early childhood reflexes have been associated with learning and language disorders and with challenging behaviors such as ADHD.
