title: The influence of head position and head position change on spontaneous body posture and motility in full-term AGA and SGA newborn infants.
abstract: No consensus exists concerning the influence of head position and head position change on body posture and motility. Especially the existence of an asymmetric tonic neck reflex (ATNR) in full-term newborns is an issue of discussion. Three-hour video recordings were made of 15 full-term appropriate for gestational age (AGA) and 15 full-term small for gestational age (SGA) infants between the third and eight postnatal day. During a playback of the video recording head position, head position change and several movement patterns of the four limbs were fed into a computer using an event-detecting program. Furthermore, spontaneous head turnings were selected and body posture just before, immediately at and 1 min after the head turning were sketched. The data were analyzed concerning: (1) influence of head position on symmetry of movement of the four limbs; (2) the existence of an ATNR and ATNR-related patterns. In both AGA and SGA infants all movement patterns except hand-face and hand-mouth contact showed a symmetrical distribution, independent of head position. Furthermore, the occurrence of an ATNR following a spontaneous head turning in both AGA and SGA infants was rare. From our results it may be concluded that the ATNR is rare in full-term AGA and SGA newborns. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that head position is not a major factor influencing quantitative aspects of spontaneous motor behaviour. The results are of clinical importance as they imply that in the examination of the neurological condition of the full-term newborn infant by means of observation of spontaneous posture and motility, head position is not of major importance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University Hospital Maastricht, University of Limburg, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: V H
authors.initials: VH
authors.lastname: van Kranen-Mastenbroek
authors.forename: K B
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Folmer
authors.forename: H B
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Caberg
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kingma
authors.forename: C E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Blanco
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Troost
authors.forename: T H
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Hasaart
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Vles
mesh_terms: D007839:Functional Laterality; D006257:Head / Q000502:physiology*; D019416:Head Movements / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007236:Infant, Small for Gestational Age / Q000502:physiology*; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D009334:Neck Muscles / Q000502:physiology; D011187:Posture / Q000502:physiology*; D012018:Reflex / Q000502:physiology; D014743:Videotape Recording