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Sleep is particularly important in the early brain development of babies and young children
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Many studies have demonstrated that
sleep is particularly important to the health and development of
babies and young children. Animal studies have shown that
sleepdramatically enhances changes in brain connections during the period of early development. For example, in experiments with young cats that had just experienced an environmental challenge, those animals that were allowed to
sleep for six hours after the stimulation developed twice the amount of change in
brain plasticity (the brain's ability to change and reorganize its
neural networks and pathways) compared to cats kept awake afterward.
This theory is borne out by the fact that young children spend
much longer sleeping than older children and adults. Babies and infants, who are acquiring information at a rate faster than at any other point during life,
sleep the most. Newborn babies can
sleep for anything up to 18 hours a day, and 12 hours or more is the norm for toddlers and youngsters all the way up to school age.
REM sleep in particular appears to be important for the
development of the brain, especially in the young developing infant. Babies spend most of their time sleeping, and up to 80% of that time may be spent in
REM sleep, whereas the older a person gets the smaller the proportion of
REM sleep becomes.
REM deprivation in infants has been shown to lead to developmental abnormalities later in life. It has been suggested that
muscle atonia (the paralysis of the muscles during
REM sleep) allows for the formation and activation of
synaptic connections in the brain during this time without any potentially dangerous motor consequences.
However, as a counter-argument to this theory, many
aquatic mammals (such as dolphins, whales, etc) experience little or no
REM sleep in infancy, and the proportion of
REM sleep in these animals actually increases as they age.
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