Naps reinforce learning in infants | Matthew Walker
Get the full length version of this episode as a podcast.
This episode will make a great companion for a long drive.
The Omega-3 Supplementation Guide
A blueprint for choosing the right fish oil supplement — filled with specific recommendations, guidelines for interpreting testing data, and dosage protocols.
Sleep patterns are dynamic, changing throughout a person's life, especially during infancy, when sleep evolves to facilitate learning. When an infant sleeps, not only do they process the facts of what they have experienced, but they form abstract notions of what those experiences mean and how they mess with other experiences. In this clip, Dr. Matthew Walker describes how napping facilitates and reinforces learning in infants.
Matt: With infants, you can teach them just these novel sounds, and each one of these strings of sounds is unique and different. But there's something common about the grammar that is binding and overarching across all of them. There is an overarching schema that you could learn in addition to each one of the individual facts.
After they've had a nap versus an infant that has not had a nap, post-nap, the infants have extracted and understood the generalized rules of what they've been learning, not just the individual facts. Whereas infants that have learned but haven't napped have not sort of made the abstraction.
Rhonda: So my being a nap nazi, I should be rewarded for that, right?
Member only extras:
Learn more about the advantages of a premium membership by clicking below.
Supporting our work
If you enjoy the fruits of
, you can participate in helping us to keep improving it. Creating a premium subscription does just that! Plus, we throw in occasional member perks and, more importantly, churn out the best possible content without concerning ourselves with the wishes of any dark overlords.
Sleep News
- High-intensity exercise in the evening may be associated with greater reductions of the hunger stimulating hormones
- The lullaby of the sun: the role of vitamin D in sleep disturbance. - PubMed - NCBI
- Microbiome Analysis Powers Insights to Improve Sleep
- Older people who have less slow-wave deep sleep were shown to have higher levels of tau tangles in the brain which is linked to Alzheimer's disease.
- Caffeine that was given to people 3 hours before normal bedtime caused a 40-minute shift in the body's internal clock.
