Children tend to nap up to a certain age, but it has never been analyzed what determines the end of this type of daytime rest, or rather, what makes some children leave it behind early while others may continue to need them despite be older. However, a study by the University of Massachusetts Amherst (USA) wanted to answer this question for parents.
Apparently, the end of naps in children is not marked by a specific age, which would explain why some children put them aside at three years old and others at five, for example. As explained in the results, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the key could be in the brain.
Naps serve to process memories
And it is that, the brain and sleep are related in various ways. One of them, according to researchers who have carried out several studies on the subject, is that napping in preschool age helps connect the bioregulatory mechanisms that underlie nap transitions, focusing on the area of the brain called the hippocampus, related with memory.
“When young children nap, they consolidate emotional and declarative memories, so one wonders, if this is such an important learning time, why would they transition from naps if it helps them consolidate learning? Why not continue napping? ”Asks Rebecca Spencer, principal investigator of the study.
Children take a nap to process their memories, because as their hippocampus is not fully mature they are not able to accumulate them until night
In previous work, the authors found that children who napped had differences in the hippocampus compared to those who did not have this daytime sleep habit. They believe that since naps serve to process memories, when the immature hippocampus of the little ones reaches the limit of storing clear memories, without interference or forgetting, there is greater sleep pressure, which is why its practice is reduced.
To understand it better, Spencer makes a simile of the hippocampus with a bucket or bucket of water, which would be the memories. When the hippocampus is inefficient, it would be like having a small bucket, which fills faster and overflows quickly, so experiences would be lost. “That’s what we think happens with children who are still napping. Their hippocampus is less mature and they need to empty that bucket more often,” explains Spencer.
However, when the hippocampus is sufficiently developed, children can put aside naps, because their ‘bucket’ will not overflow and they will have the ability to accumulate memories during the day, processing them during night sleep, where they will travel to the crust to accumulate.
According to the author, it is important to provide children with the opportunity to nap, as this will benefit their learning, which underlies early education. Now it remains to verify these results in more studies, in this way the new framework created “could be used to evaluate multiple unproven predictions from the field of sleep science and, ultimately, generate science-based guidelines and policies regarding sleep science. naps in child care and early education settings,” the authors conclude.
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