Functional Implications of Sleep Development 英文参考文献.docVIP

Open access, freely available online Primer Functional Implications of Sleep Development Jerome M. Siegel A lthough frazzled new parents may beg to differ, infants do sleep more than adults. This sleep pattern is seen in a wide variety of mammalian species, with some obvious selective advantages. Sleep is a time of reduced body and brain metabolic rate [1,2], allowing energy conservation, particularly if a warm place is available, as can be provided by a compliant parent or sibling. The sleeping, quiescent infant is also less likely to attract predators and is easier to transport. At the earliest ages, infants who have not yet opened their eyes and whose cortex is not yet developed have limited learning opportunities from interactions with the outside world: another reason for reduced waking. But sleep comes in many forms. Evolutionary arguments may make sense for slow-wave deep sleep patterns at birth that are associated with a general shutdown of the brain, but may not provide such an obvious explanation for the relative predominance of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. For example, in human neonates REM sleep constitutes approximately eight hours per day, or 50% of the total sleep time, whereas human adults devote less than two hours per day, or 20% of their seven to eight hours of sleep time, to REM sleep [3]. REM sleep is characterized by high brain metabolic and neuronal activity rates [4], reduced muscle tone, irregular and relatively automatic respiration uncoupled from its usual regulatory mechanisms [5], and diminished thermoregulation [6]. These properties seem maladaptive, which suggests that there must be some compensatory survival bene?t for REM sleep to have persisted. Could REM sleep play a particularly important role in development? DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030178.g001 Figure 1. Model of Some of the Major Systems Involved in Regulating Muscle Activity in REM Sleep Drawn on a Sagittal Section of the Brainstem Cholinergic (ACh) neurons in the po