Newborn infants learn during sleep

Newborn infants learn during sleep.

Newborn infants must rapidly adjust their physiology and behavior to the specific demands of the novel postnatal environment. This adaptation depends, at least in part, on the infant's ability to learn from experiences. We report here that infants exhibit learning even while asleep. Bioelectrical activity from face and scalp electrodes was recorded from neonates during an eye movement condition...

Analgesia for Newborn Infants during Mechanical Ventilation

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Cardiac changes during sleep in sleep-deprived infants.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the influence of a brief period of sleep deprivation on cardiac autonomic controls during sleep in healthy infants. DESIGN Twelve healthy infants with a median age of 8 weeks (range, 7 to 18 weeks) were recorded polygraphically during a morning and an afternoon nap in a sleep laboratory. They were sleep deprived for approximately 2 hours, either in the morning or in the ...

Learn While You Sleep

Smoking during Pregnancy Affects Speech-Processing Ability in Newborn Infants

BACKGROUND Tobacco smoking during pregnancy is known to adversely affect development of the central nervous system in babies of smoking mothers by restricting utero-placental blood flow and the amount of oxygen available to the fetus. Behavioral data associate maternal smoking with lower verbal scores and poorer performance on specific language/auditory tests. OBJECTIVES In the current study ...