Even for young babies, out of sight doesn’t automatically mean out of mind. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that even though infants cannot remember the shapes of two hidden objects, they are surprised when those objects disappear completely.
The conclusion? Infants do, indeed, remember an object’s existence without recalling what that object is.
This is important, Melissa Kibbe explains, because it sheds light on the brain mechanisms that support memory in infancy and beyond.
“Our results seem to indicate that the brain has a set of ‘pointers’ that it uses to pick out the things in the world that we need to keep track of,” says Kibbe,
(Source: pss.sagepub.com)
The 1st study of its kind measuring the link between daily growth and sleep show the two are inextricably linked. Details are reported in the journal Sleep.
Specifically, growth spurts are tied to an increase in total daily hours of sleep as well as an increase in the number of daily sleep bouts, the time from the onset of sleep until awakening.
“Little is known about the biology of growth spurts,” says Michelle Lampl, the study’s lead author and professor of anthropology at Emory University.
