The important to learning and memory in early life is a long nap, say experts.
Trials with 216 babies up to 1 year old indicated they were not capable to remember fresh jobs if they did not have a long sleep soon afterwards.
The Sheffield University team advised the top time to learn may be just before sleep and empahsised the significance of reading at bedtime.
Professionals said sleep may be much more vital in early years than at other ages.
People spend more of their time asleep as kids than at any other point in their lives.
Yet the experts, in Ruhr and Sheffield University, in Germany, say strikingly little is famous about the important of sleep in the first year of life.
They taught 6 to 12 month-olds 3 jobs involving playing with hand puppets.
Half the babies slept within 4 hours of learning, while the rest either had no napped or sleep for fewer than 30 minutes.
The next day, the babies were confident to repeat what they had been taught.
The results, released in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, presented sleeping like a baby was an important for learning.
On average one-and-a-half jobs could be repeated after having a substantial nap.
Yet zero jobs could be repeated if there was small sleep time.
She said it had been guessed that “big-awake was best” for learning, but instead it may be the events just before sleep that are most vital.
And, that findings presented just how worth reading books with children before sleep could be.
Dr Herbert included: “Parents get load of suggestion, some saying fixed sleep, some flexible, these findings advise some flexibility would be helpful, but they do not say what parents should do.”
A study end year exposed the mechanisms of memory in sleep. It presented how new links between brain cells formed during sleep.
Prof Derk-Jan Dijk, a sleep experts at the Surrey University, said: “it may be that sleep is much more vital at some ages than others, but that remains to be definitely established.”
He said babies should actually get enough sleep to attract learning, but concentrating learning just before bedtime may not be top.
There is also rising interest in memory and sleep at the other end of life.
Originally posted 2015-01-15 06:48:42.