Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex and Vision

Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex  (STNR) is so interesting, as it does not emerge until the child is about 6 months old. This means that it is not a primitive reflex, but is actually a postural reflex. Also, it means that developmentally, this will not emerge until some of the other reflexes have been integrated. And that means that many people never had their STNR emerge, much less have integrated it. PHEW!

When I am teaching a course, usually more than half of the adults in the room have not fully integrated the Moro, or that it has re-emerged. Think about the consequences of that. So many people walking around, functioning well, even obtaining advanced degrees, without their reflexes fully integrated. As a matter of fact, when I show people what it looks like when testing someone who has not integrated the STNR, they feel that the response is normal. Well, it is not optimal, but is probably normal for most of the population.

Here are the symptoms of an unintegrated STNR (most people would not have all of the symptoms; but if several are present, it is probably due to the reflex):

• Poor posture
• Ape-like walk
• "W" leg position while sitting on floor
• Poor eye-hand coordination
• Messy eater
• Tracking problems
• Convergence problems
• Near focusing problems
• Slow with copying tasks
• Difficulty learning to swim
• Poor attention

Since today's newsletter is about vision, I will specifically talk about tracking, convergence, and near focusing.

Tracking

Tracking is the name of the visual skill that allows a person to smoothly and effortlessly follow a moving target. While ATNR worked on horizontal tracking, STNR works on vertical tracking. We need this so that, when reading, we can easily go from the end of one line to the begging of the next line. The person with this issue will lose their place when reading, read the same line again, or skip a line. Reading is very slow and comprehension suffers because of the need to read each paragraph several times to be able to keep it all straight.

Convergence

Good convergence allows us to see distance to near and back again quickly and efficiently. We need this in school in order to copy from the board and in sports to follow the baseball, basketball, or football as it comes closer and closer. People with extremely poor convergence even have difficulty copying from a book to a piece of paper, or reading a book if it is flat on the table. They will instead pick it up so that the page is a uniform distance from their eyes.

Near Focusing

This is acuity - the ability to see well when the information is close to the eyes. It is usually helped by glasses, but can also be helped by STNR reflex integration and vision exercises.  I will go into this in much more detail next month when the newsletter is specifically about vision.

Notice how many people over 40 wear glasses. As they age, their vision gets worse, and their reflexes seem to re-emerge as well. I have been doing my reflex exercises almost daily for the past 4 years and have found that my vision has significantly improved. I do not need glasses anymore except when the lighting is very low and the text is very small. Certainly, I have better vision than most of my peers, and it wasn't always this way!

Reflexes and the order they are integrated

Of the 6 reflexes I have covered, STNR is developmentally the last to be integrated naturally. Babies integrate these 6 throughout the first year of life, and many overlap. Through my decade of experience, I have found that although the deepest integration is found by integrating them one at a time developmentally, most families are not willing to do the 6 months worth of work before continuing on to other things, like cognitive training. They see so many improvements after Spinal Galant is integrated that they don't want to continue with ATNR and STNR. Yet, all reflexes, if retained, are important!

The solution was to see how people would do if they did the reflex integration together, rather than one reflex at a time. We found that they were tolerated, and that many people had even better integration by stimulating the entire brain at once. So far, people are not overwhelmed or overstimulated.

So, give it a try! Do all at once, rather than in developmental order (Moro, Palmar, TLR, Spinal Galant, ATNR, and STNR). Use Maintaining Brains Everyday DVD for a month or two or three. The longer, the deeper the integration. However, be sure to move on to target the other issues that might be a problem.

Maintaining Brains has an introduction, and two levels of exercises - beginning and advanced. It is like an exercise DVD to follow along, takes about 15 minutes a day, and includes a booklet that explains the exercises. And it's on sale!

Next week:

Auditory Processing: diagnosis, accommodations, and remediation