Dream critically affects the child brain development

Robert Rosenberg

In British Medical Journal of Eastern month, there is a report about a study that shows the relationship of the dream for the development of the brain in children. He is called the Millennium cohort study and followed 11,000 children. Most negatively affected children who showed irregular bedtime until age three when it came to reading, math and spatial awareness. When over time, continued to lag development even at the age of seven - and girls more than boys. The authors concluded that the first three years of life seems to be a particularly sensitive time for sleep and its relation with the development of the brain.

The results are similar to a smaller Canadian study published in the journal of sleep in 2008. This study found that children sleeping less than ten hours a night before three years were more likely to display language and reading problems as well as ADHD. In both studies, these problems persist despite the improvement in the total time of sleep after three years.

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What we are seeing here is the relationship of sleep to neuroplasticity. Neural plasticity refers to structural and functional changes in the brain caused by training and experience. It is the brain's ability to change by increasing cerebral tissue called gray matter and alter the circuits in the brain called synapses. We know that adults are capable of these changes, but on a much smaller scale. It seems that it is the most crucial period of such changes in the brain probably during the first three years of life. In fact, is one of the reasons that children can recover from the trauma more complete principal that adults can. It also explains the fact that if all the left hemisphere is eliminated in a three or four years, that child may still develop normal language skills. This is not possible in an adult.

Does your child need much sleep
How does the dream in this? We know that children exhibit the greatest amount of slow wave sleep (deep). Recent studies have correlated this dream of slow waves with the development of the brain. In fact, certain types of brain scans have shown that regions of the brain that receives these slow wave show further growth and development in response. REM sleep is also important and plays an important role in the development of Visual related parts of our brain. Finally, recent works show production during the sleep of brain proteins necessary for these changes.

What is the message of these studies take? That dream is probably much more important in child brain development that we never have before. It is very important that your child gets enough sleep - and that, as the British study showed, it is to establish a bed-time adjusted so that your child adheres. Their future may depend on it.

"Sleep and child brain development: the critical link" originally appeared in the journal of health

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