The purpose of this review is to serve as an introduction to understanding sleep in the fetus, the preterm neonate and the term neonate. Sleep appears to have numerous important roles, particularly in the consolidation of new information. The sleep cycle changes over time, neonates spend the most time in active sleep and have a progressive shortening of active sleep and lengthening of quiet sle...

background: premature birth is a major cause of infant mortality in developed countries. newborns confined to neonatal intensive care units (nicus) are in a rapid stage of brain development. as such, sleep plays a pivotal role in the proper brain development of newborns. however, this developmental aspect is often disregarded due to the lack of information. aim: this study aimed to evaluate the...

Background: Due to the importance of sleep in brain development of infants, this study was designed to compare the effects of environmental and behavioral Interventions on sleep cycle of preterm infants in NICU. Methods: In this prospective crossover clinical trial, 40 preterm infants with fetal age of 32 to 36 weeks hospitalized in NICU were selected. Infants...

The aims of this longitudinal study were to examine (a) development of infant sleep and maternal sleep from 3 to 6 months postpartum; (b) concomitant and prospective links between maternal sleep and infant sleep; and (c) triadic links between paternal involvement in infant caregiving and maternal and infant sleep. The study included 57 families that were recruited during pregnancy. Maternal and...

Coping with sleep disruption is a common difficulty faced by new parents. Here we take a critical, contextual and evolutionary perspective on recent evidence surrounding the development of normal infant sleep in the postnatal period, its relationship with feeding method and the relevance of sleep location. Firstly, we explore the question of defining ‘normal’ infant sleep, considering the timin...

Infant sleep undergoes dramatic evolution during the first year of life. This process is driven by underlying biological forces but is highly dependent on environmental cues including parental influences. In this review the links between infant sleep and parental behaviors, cognitions, emotions and relationships as well as psychopathology are examined within the context of a transactional model...

background: proper sleep is essential for the development of premature infants. infants, during hospitalization, might suffer from inappropriate postures and insufficient sleep hours. to compare the daily sleep quantities of premature infants in flexed (facilitated fetal tucking) posture and extended (free body) posture. this study is a randomized clinical trial which was conducted in neonatal ...

Infant mammals cycle rapidly between sleep and wakefulness and only gradually does a more consolidated sleep pattern develop. The neural substrates responsible for this consolidation are unknown. To establish a reliable measure of sleep-wake cyclicity in infant rats, nuchal muscle tone was measured in 2-, 5-, and 8-day-old rats, as were motor behaviors associated with sleep (i.e. myoclonic twit...