Oral-motor reflexes

Oral-motor reflexes are a collection of primitive, involuntary motor responses in the mouth and face observed in early life, which enable essential actions such as locating and latching onto a food source (rooting reflex), extracting milk (sucking reflex), moving food from mouth to esophagus (swallowing reflex), as well as gagging and biting. These reflexes are mediated by neural circuits in the brainstem (central pattern generators) and are crucial for neonatal feeding, airway protection, and establishing the foundation for later voluntary oral-motor skills important for chewing, swallowing, and speech. The presence, absence, or persistence of specific oral-motor reflexes is clinically important for assessing neurological health and early development[2][4][7][8][9][10].

Other names

Primitive oral reflexesorofacial reflexesfeeding reflexesoral reflexes