Sleep Starts in Babies Could be Unique

We all experience sleep twitches sometime in our lives but, sleep twitches in babies are something unique. Researchers explored this unpopular phenomenon and gave some new insights into how the brains and bodies of infants are coordinating during sleep times.

Researchers from the University of Iowa observed the infants in their sleep for months and reported their findings in the journal Current Biology.

‘Babies could have sleep spindles during the Quiet Sleep phase. They are concentrated along the sensorimotor strip of the brain.’

"This was completely surprising and, for all we know, unique to humans and human infants. We were seeing things that we could not explain, based on our years of observation in baby rats and what's available in the scientific literature," said Mark Blumberg, one of the study's authors.

The study team recorded the brain waves of 22 sleeping infants in the age group of one week to seven months.

They found that babies were twitching their limbs at the Quiet sleep (QS) phase apart from their Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep phase. The rate of occurrence of sleep spindles during this QS phase was about once every ten seconds.

Adding further surprise, the team noted that the sleep spindles and twitches occurred in synchronization. These spindles also showed a rise in frequency beginning around three months to seven months of age and were concentrated along the sensorimotor strip of the brain, which controls movement and sensing.

"Sleep spindles have been widely linked with learning and memory. So, our findings suggested to us that what the infants are doing is learning about their bodies through twitching during a period of sleep that we previously thought was defined by behavioral silence," said Greta Sokoloff, the study's lead author.



Source: Medindia