Sleep is a fundamental habit in humans, but during childhood it has an especially relevant role. Both sleeping at night and taking naps throughout the day is a healthy and necessary habit for the little ones. But, Why is napping so important for babies?
Several studies have shown it in recent years and the most recent, carried out by a team from the Ruhr University of Bochum, in Germany rectifies it: nap improves babies learning.
According to an article published in the magazine Proceedings of National Academy of Science (PNAS), napping is key to fixing what babies learn. Sleeping shortly after learning helps children retain memories for longer periods of time.
The dream undoubtedly improves the consolidation of the call declarative memory, which is responsible for evoking data consciously, as well as memories in children between six months and a year.
To prove it, the researchers divided 216 babies into two groups for the study. The children, aged six and 12 months, were taught how to take off the gloves of some puppets. Then some took a half-hour nap, while others did not.
A day later the researchers tested whether the babies remembered what they had been taught. The children who took a nap remembered what they learned.
Sleeping naps of at least 30 minutes make children better able to retain and remember new learning, even up to 24 hours after learning them.
It is said that babies learn even when they are sleeping and it is true. Naps are essential for the baby to fix in his brain the lessons he experiences when he is awake.
According to the researchers, this is possibly due to the fact that in the brain of babies, the hippocampus has a very limited capacity and sleep is their way of downloading information into the neocortex before forgetting it.
