It’s a treasured moment for most parents: the first time they place a finger in the delicate palm of their infant and feel tiny little fingers wrap around and squeeze it.

For typically developing newborns, this automatic, involuntary response — known as the grasp reflex — provides comfort. For most babies, it exists for just a couple of months and then fades away, perhaps to the chagrin of a doting parent but to the satisfaction of doctors and therapists. The timely appearance and disappearance of early childhood reflexes and postural movements mean it’s less likely a child suffers from developmental delays.

Svetlana Masgutova, PhD, has been leading research that takes this well-documented connection between neurological development and reflexes to a new level. Her work has shown that by therapeutically reproducing the reflex and postural movements that occur naturally in babies, it can allow for the maturation of these patterns and advance a child with delays to the next stage of neurological development and functioning.

“Reflexes provide protection and development,” says Masgutova, a Russian psychologist, who has performed most of her research in Poland and, in recent years, has brought her methods and research to the U.S. “These children are blocked on a survival level, which means they won’t get to go through new experiences that help them develop. Using the concept of integrating — not inhibiting — the reflex, we work on the level of brain organization to help improve the quality of patient functioning.”

Her more than 20 years of research on more than 3,000 children led Masgutova to develop the Masgutova Neuro-sensory-motor Reflex Integration — MNRI (r) Method — a set of programs and protocols that target the restoration and maturation of primary movements, reflexes, coordination systems and skills. The goal is to support a patient’s ability to improve his or her natural mechanisms, developmental processes, brain functioning and sensory-motor integration through the stimulation of reflexive patterns.

Conversation with the Brain
According to Masgutova, the primitive reflexes and primary movement patterns, which are the same in everyone, provide a pathway to communicate with the brain. By incorporating sensory stimuli, it will elicit a reflexive and predictable movement pattern.

For example, when you stroke the outside of the sole from the heel and up along the side of a baby’s foot, it will trigger the Babinski reflex — which, in a typically developing child, should disappear by age 2. If such reflex patterns still exist in a patient, Masgutova says the pattern still can be integrated and used to stimulate neurodevelopment, regardless of age.

“Our concept of neuro-sensory-motor reflex integration is based on awakening latent brain stem genetic motor memory so that it may serve as a resource for neurodevelopment,” Masgutova writes in her 2008 article, “Masgutova Method of Reflex Integration for Children with Cerebral Palsy.” “Human development, whether normal or abnormal, is continuous. Stages of maturation and the emergence of reflex patterns should not be thought of as static points in development but as glimpses of particular moments in a dynamic process.”

Despite the many years of published research by Masgutova — most of which is still in the process of being translated to English — MNRI has had mostly a word-of-mouth following in the U.S. among physical and occupational therapists, as well as families of patients who have had success. Parent and family participation are critical in MNRI, as they must do exercises at home to support the progress.

Diane Whiteside, PT, a therapist for 32 years who works in the outpatient therapy clinic at San Ramon Regional Medical Center in the San Francisco Bay area, and her colleague, Jennifer Kroll, OTR/L, a pediatric OT for 11 years, were first trained in MNRI nearly five years ago. They took a class at the hospital, presented by Masgutova, at the urging of a parent who had seen major progress in her son using MNRI.

“I began seeing a child with CP who at 3 1/2 was unable to crawl and unfold himself from the dominant flexion patterns,” she says. “After six months of the Masgutova Method, he was able to crawl. In a year, he was walking with canes. At 5 1/2, he is walking independently with one cane.”

Long-Sought Relief
For the family of an 8-year-old child on the autism spectrum with major bowel/bladder issues, MNRI brought long-sought relief. Despite medication and therapeutic interventions, his mother had to spend at least an hour a day sitting in the bathroom to help her son initiate his bowel and bladder. So when Kroll told her about MNRI, she was very motivated to follow the home program as prescribed.

“I had worked with the child using traditional OT methods,” Kroll says. “We started using MNRI a year ago — we used a spinal galant exercise and then a spinal Perez — and within two months, he was self-initiating.”

Tanya Hallman, OTR/L, who works in a Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.-area practice and sees mostly children on the autism spectrum, was trained in MNRI a year ago and now uses it almost exclusively. She helped a 9-year-old with low functioning autism — who was tactilely defensive and needed a fidget — learn to open his hands. He now lets Hallman work with him without resistance.

“Now that his hands are open, he’s opening up his posture,” Hallman says. “All of that opens him to the world and new experiences.”

Masgutova stresses her method is not a cure-all. “MNRI won’t change a patient’s base disorder, but it will improve the quality of their functioning,” she says. “Through working with natural reflexes, everyone has the potential to advance.” •

Marnie McLeod Santoyo is a freelance writer.