The jury's still out on why humans need to sleep. Once widely considered a passive, restful process, researchers now know that sleep's sole purpose is not physical rest. Sleep is an active process that can help regulate our nervous, immune, limbic, digestive, and cardiovascular systems, keeping everything from levels of the stress hormone cortisol to our resting blood pressure at homeostatic levels. As important as sleep is for adults, it is vital to the developing fetus and neonate.
The establishment of regular sleep cycles in the consolidation of adult sleep is a crucial piece in the structural and functional development of the infant neurological system, including sensory, motor, memory, learning, and social/emotional modalities.
This site investigates the relationship between sleep--specifically rapid eye movement (REM) sleep--and development of the adult neurological system, touring the components of the adult sleep cycle, the stages of the prenatal sleep cycle, the role of REM sleep in structural and functional development of the nervous system, and the effects of arresting the development of the sleep cycle on the mature individual.
