Postnatal hypokinesia and the delayed time frame of sudden infant death syndrome

The sudden infant death syndrome peaks in the second and third month of life. This is the period of the "two-month transformation of the central nervous system" in the human infant. Studies of 120 days of imposed hypokinesia in man demonstrated that the maximum period of autonomic dysfunction was delayed until the beginning of the second month through to the fourth month of the experiment. Hypokinesia also impaired sleep mechanisms and induced polymorphic changes in almost all systems of the human body. These studies suggest that prolonged postnatal hypokinesia in infants may induce autonomic dysfunction in the CNS, especially during the "two-month transformation period" of major postnatal neural development.