Science Daily: A new study from University of Iowa researchers provides further insights into the coordination that takes place between infants’ brains and bodies as they sleep.

The Iowa researchers have for years studied infants’ twitching movements during REM sleep and how those twitches contribute to babies’ ability to coordinate their bodily movements. In this study, the scientists report that beginning around three months of age, infants see a pronounced increase in twitching during a second major stage of sleep, called quiet sleep.

“This was completely surprising and, for all we know, unique to humans and human infants,” says Mark Blumberg, F. Wendell Miller Professor and chair in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and one of the study’s authors. “We were seeing things that we could not explain, based on our years of observation in baby rats and what’s available in the scientific literature.”

The researchers recorded 22 sleeping infants, ranging from one week of age to seven months, and their twitches. At first, the scientists paid attention solely to the twitches occurring alongside REM sleep, in keeping with their previous research of REM sleep-associated twitching in other mammals.

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