Spontaneous Sleep, Spindles, and Slow Waves in Infants
A converging line of study in the ISL is underway via NIH-funded studies (both cross-sectional and longitudinal) that examine the complex relations between natural sleep and cognition in typically developing human infants across the first year of life. These studies use a novel approach to sleep research, employing dEEG and analytic techniques rarely used in sleep studies, in combination with concurrent assessment of infant cognition and information processing.
The focus is on sleep microstructure (e.g. sleep spindles and slow waves), which is hypothesized to play a critical role in infant brain maturation. Outcomes of this study will accelerate our understanding of infant brain development across the first year of life, delineating the emergence, function and maturation of changing oscillatory sleep patterns, while simultaneously facilitating future translational approaches (e.g. interventional strategies for slow wave and spindle enhancement) targeting developmental sleep as it relates to the prevention of neuropsychiatric disorders.