Night Sleep Duration Will Affect Infant intelligence

The research states that babies sleep duration at night have a connection to the baby’s cognitive function. Researchers from the University of Minnesota and University of Montreal found that after recording the sleep patterns of toddlers. At ages 12-18, parents were asked to record the baby’s bedtime habits with interval 30 minutes (record time nap and waking up at noon). At the age of 18-26 months, researchers conducted tests on the performance of the infant brain.

Here are the results of a study reported in the journal Child Development:
The babies who sleep longer at night, between the hours of 19:00 to 7:00, answering test better than sleeping with the amount of time longer, but in the afternoon. In other words, sleep at night is much more important than a nap. Researchers say, the longer the baby sleep better at night.

The baby was asked to test the executive functions, namely getting the information in memory, impulse control, and decide something, which is a difficult task for two-year-old baby. For example, on a test, researchers put a sticker on one of three pots, cover them with blankets, then asked the children to indicate which ones have the pot stickers.

Obviously, this is a small study, but could provide the discovery that sleep has an impact on our brain function during the day. In this case, related to brain function to absorb and process information, and understand the situation around. This also affects the baby.

It is very important because, apparently, although the same amount of sleep, but napping is not good enough to replace the function of sleep at night, at least for the health and brain development of children. Apparently, sleep at night and naps are managed by different parts of the brain, in terms of circuit and rhythm, until clear already, time to sleep at night for the child can not be replaced in the afternoon.

Babies are often awakened at night, few people know how to return the baby to fall asleep again quickly. However, about keeping the baby for not sleeping during the day and can sleep early and longer at night is still a debate.