Neural Exam - Newborn reflexes - Moro

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This 5-day-old infant is in the alert, quiet state.

The Moro reflex is obtained by holding the baby’s head and shoulders off of the mat with the arms held in flexion on the chest.
The examiner suddenly lets the head and shoulders drop back a few inches while releasing the arms.
The arms should fully abduct and extend, then return towards the midline with the hand open and the thumb and the index finger forming a “C” shape.
An absent or incomplete Moro is seen in upper motor neuron lesions.
An asymmetric Moro is most often seen with a brachial plexus lesion.
The brachial plexus palsy is on the side of the poorly abducted arm.

Movie Source - Paul D. Larsen
Movies from the PediNeuroLogic Exam website are used by permission of Paul D. Larsen, M.D., University of Nebraska Medical Center and Suzanne S. Stensaas, Ph.D., University of Utah School of Medicine. Additional materials were drawn from resources provided by Alejandro Stern, Stern Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Kathleen Digre, M.D., University of Utah; and Daniel Jacobson, M.D., Marshfield Clinic, Wisconsin. The movies are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
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Cite this page: Hill, M.A. (2024, April 23) Embryology Neural Exam - Newborn reflexes - Moro. Retrieved from https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/Neural_Exam_-_Newborn_reflexes_-_Moro