Nancy Melucci wrote:
> A student in my Santa Monica Class who does child care for a healthy young
> infant said that she's never seen the child in REM and wondered if it's
> possible that the child didn't have it. I said I thought that it was not
> possible for a normally developing or health person not to have REM sleep but
> thought I should run it by the more knowledgeable list denizens anyway.
> Wouldn't there be something terribly wrong with the baby if it didn't have
> REM?
I am assuming that the baby you speak of is a newborn or, at least, very young
baby (less than a few months). Newborns sleep about 16 hours per day, on
average, with about six short sleep periods spread equally over the 24-hour day.
During this early part of life, sleep is divided into only two stages: active
sleep and quiet sleep. When newborns first fall to sleep, they enter a stage
referred to as active sleep, during which they show a great deal of bodily
activity (such as head movements, rapid eye-movements, fast and irregular
respiration, and increased heart rate). The EEG shows brain waves similar to
those seen during the REM sleep of adults and, thus, active sleep is thought to
be the newborn infant’s version of REM sleep. After about 30 minutes, newborns
enter quiet sleep, a stage in which they move very little. The EEG readings
during quiet sleep show brain waves characteristic of a mixture of the four
stages of adult NREM sleep and, thus, quiet sleep is thought to be the newborn
infant’s version of NREM sleep. The sleep of newborns shows four major
differences from the sleep of adults and older children. (a) The newborn cycles
through the quiet and active stages about once every 60 minutes instead of the
90 minutes seen in adults. (b) The newborn enters sleep by going into a REM-like
stage instead of a NREM stage. (c) The REM-like stage of active sleep makes up
about a fairly large proportion of their sleep (about 50% compared to the 20-30%
seen later in during childhood). (d) Newborns don't show the motor paralysis
during their REM-like sleep that older children and adults do.
Jeff
--
Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213
9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298
Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626
"The truth is rare and never simple."
Oscar Wilde
"Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths"
Karl Popper
"If you want to learn new things, you should try reading old books."
Richard Cytowic
